Beauty and the Brain (10 page)

Again he was thwarted, this time by a deep
bass voice that held an element of gruff timelessness. He pushed
his glasses higher on his nose and squinted through them.

Good God, was that Jerry Begay?

It was.

“Come on, Colin. You used to play ball with
us when you lived with my family.” He smiled up at Colin.

Colin couldn’t hide his astonishment. While
he knew better than to believe the common myth among America’s
white citizens that red men were inscrutable and unemotional—or
even red, for that matter—he wasn’t accustomed to seeing Begay
playing baseball with a bunch of actors. He wasn’t accustomed to
seeing him smile, come to think of it. He knew good and well that
the Navajos considered white men beneath them to as great a degree
as white men considered Navajos beneath them.

“Come on!” Brenda urged again, trapping him
in the beams of her sunny smile. “Baseball’s a lot of fun! You can
probably learn how to have fun, too, if you try real hard!”

And if that wasn’t a completely snide and
unwarranted comment, Colin didn’t know what was. She was trying to
be funny at his expense, and he didn’t like it. Unfortunately, the
people around her laughed. They would. They were probably blinded
by her beauty, the fools.

He glared at her for no more than a second,
but it was fully long enough to understand that she had intended to
needle him and would undoubtedly continue to do so, especially if
he refused to join in her silly game. Blast. And he’d fallen for
it. Furious with her and with himself, he snapped out, “Very well.
I’ll be there in a minute.” Then he slammed his window shut with a
little too much force, wheeled around, and began muttering.

“This is ridiculous,” he growled as he
yanked off his jacket. “I have no more interest in baseball than I
have in flying to the sun, like Icarus.” He untied his shoes,
shoved them from his feet, and then stopped moving. Shoes. What
other shoes had he brought with him?

Thinking back for a moment, he thought he
recalled that Brenda and Martin were wearing canvas shoes. Tennis
shoes, Colin had heard them called.

Colin didn’t have any tennis shoes. The only
shoes he possessed were serviceable and highly polished numbers
suited to his position as a city-dwelling academician. Unless . . .
Hmmm. He went to the closet, thrust aside his dressing robe, and
smiled. Ah, yes, there they were. Bending over, he grabbed the
grubbiest pair of shoes he’d ever seen except on the
reservation.

So be it. If those silly people were going
to insist upon him playing games with them, they were going to have
to take his research shoes along with the rest of him. The shoes
were big and clunky, but they’d seen him through more expeditions
into more wilderness areas in more states, territories, and foreign
lands than Brenda Fitzpatrick could ever even dream of.

He shoved his feet into them, wiggled his
toes, and tied the laces, pleased with himself. Then he stood up,
looked down at his shoes, and uttered a short curse. He’d forgotten
to change his trousers and shirt.

Mumbling under his breath some more, he went
back to the closet and grabbed his research clothes from their
hangers. As he buttoned up the old plaid flannel shirt, ripped here
and there during various interesting encounters with unusual flora
and repaired inexpertly by his own hands around campfires in all
sorts of out-of-the-way places, he grinned. He could hardly wait to
see the look on Brenda Fitzpatrick’s face when she beheld him now.
Ha!

She thought she was so smart in her fancy
sporting clothes. She expected him to show up in a suit and tie and
shiny shoes, didn’t she? By God, she’d learn there was more to
Colin Peters than a brain.

The little fool. She had no idea that there
were places in the world where fancy clothes counted for nothing.
Less than nothing. What mattered in the wild were quick wits, a
cunning intelligence, and rugged determination. Colin possessed all
three qualities in abundance, and he was just going to show them
all today, and that was that.

He knew he was being childish and couldn’t
seem to stop it to save himself. After he’d yanked on his faded
denim trousers and retied his “explorer” shoes, he slapped a soft
cap onto his head—might as well go whole hog—and left his room,
trying to remember if baseball was the game in which one struck at
the ball with a stick or tried to throw it through a hoop.

Brenda knew that the surge of glee she
experienced when Colin capitulated to their exhortations was
probably unworthy of her finer emotions. She didn’t care. Let the
man make a fool of himself. He needed it, the pompous ass.

She wished she believed herself. “Batter
up!” she shouted, aiming a mock frown at the Indians’ bullpen.

A young man, probably not more than fifteen
or sixteen and looking as if he’d rather be elsewhere, got up from
a bench under a spreading oak tree and walked over to home plate.
Brenda thought this boy was some kind of relative of Jerry Begay,
but she hadn’t figured out all of the relationships yet. The only
one of the Navajos who spoke at all was Jerry. She’d been trying to
humor them into loosening up but hadn’t succeeded so far. There was
lots of time in which to do so, and she was an expert, so she
didn’t despair.

She smiled at the boy, whose dusky skin
darkened slightly. Hmmm. Interesting. She didn’t know Indians could
blush. “Ready?” she asked him kindly.

He nodded, cleared his throat, took his
position at the plate, and nodded to the pitcher. It looked as if
he’d had lots of practice playing baseball because his pose was
comfortable and easy.

The pitcher for the Peerless crew was
Gilbert Drew, an actor who played a supporting role to Leroy
Carruthers. Gil was supposed to be an army captain in
Indian
Love Song
. He thought he was hot stuff, but Brenda liked him
anyway, mainly because she recognized the frightened boy beneath
Gil’s swagger. She was peculiarly adept at filtering through
people’s surface poses and lighting on the essentials they tried to
keep concealed. Which was one of the reasons her failure to
penetrate Colin Peters’s defenses galled her.

“Let ‘er rip!” Gil called, and gave a
comical windup. His aim was good in spite of his bravado, and the
ball sailed right over the plate.

The boy at bat swung hard, Brenda heard a
tremendous crack, and she saw the ball fly off the bat and through
the branches of a gigantic fir tree growing next to the Cedar
Crest’s west wall. She took off her baseball cap—given to her by a
smitten New York Giants baseball player last autumn—and squinted
into the tree. “My goodness, I think that’s a home run.”

The boy, who hadn’t stuck around to listen
to her judgment on the play, had already started flying around the
bases. The outfield of the Peerless team raced into the trees,
hoping to recover the ball. Brenda wished them luck. She’d bet that
ball was history. Which reminded her of Colin, and she turned
around to see if he’d shown up yet.

Her breath hitched in her chest. Great God
Almighty, could that man walking down the steps of the Cedar
Crest’s back porch and looking like a cross between a Greek god and
Sir Richard Burton, actually be Colin Peters? It was all she could
do not to gawk at him as men had been gawking at her for lo, these
many years. She stood up and slapped her cap back onto her
head.

This would never do. She grabbed for her
customary insouciance with determination and managed to sling a
grin in Colin’s direction. “You made it!” she crowed, feigning
delight. In truth, she’d as soon he’d not haw, come at all, if his
altered appearance was going to affect her like this.

This wasn’t fair. She’d had him all figured
out and then he’d gone and changed the rules on her. She’d never
have expected to encounter Colin looking like a romantic character
out of an African safari. Or one of Mr. Roosevelt’s dashing Rough
Riders. Bother. This was so like him. Thank heavens he still wore
his glasses. If those went, Brenda was doomed.

He pushed the glasses up his nose as she
thought about them, and she felt minutely better. “Yes,” he said,
sounding put out about it. “I made it.”

“Good.”

The boy who’d hit the ball rounded third
base and raced for home, and his team cheered his performance.
Thank heaven that he’d provided a distraction, Brenda turned away
from Colin. “Good work! That was a super hit.”

He smiled at her and nodded once. It was a
small nod and an even smaller smile, but Brenda accounted it a
victory. She’d loosen these guys up yet.

“Good work, Notah.” Colin held out his hand
to the boy.

Brenda’s head swam. Good heavens, he seemed
to know every Indian here personally.

“Thanks, Colin.” The boy shook. Colin’s hand
shyly and trotted back to his bench, where he was greeted with
smiles and slaps on his back.

Brenda turned a narrow gaze upon Colin “My,
you know everybody, don’t you?”

“I know some of these men,” he said stiffly.
“I lived with them for two summers.”

“Hmmm. Yes, I remember.”

“Which team should I play for?” he asked,
and looked around, as if he were missing something. “Where’s
Martin?”

“He’s out looking for the ball. As for which
team, I think the Indians need you more than the Cowboys—”

“Indians and Cowboys?”

The look he gave her was so near a sneer as
made no matter, and it infuriated Brenda. “Yes. The teams chose
their own names, and if you object, then you just should have been
here sooner, I guess.”

“I see.” He looked about as charming as sour
milk tasted.

“Anyway, you can be on the Indians’ team,
because there are only fifteen of them, and there are about thirty
ready to play for Peerless.”

He gazed at her as if she were an annoying
bug he couldn’t shoo away. “Thank you for your opinion. I’ll find
Martin and ask him.” He turned and started walking away from
her.

Brenda’s nature was basically calm. She
possessed an even disposition, a good sense of humor, and an
enormous tolerance for the foibles and failings of her fellow
creatures on God’s earth. When Colin dismissed her as if she were
of no more worth than a spent rifle cartridge and set out to ask
somebody else his question, her temper blew up like a firecracker.
She took a furious leap at his back and grabbed his arm, succeeding
in swinging him around to face her because he was so startled he
had no time to brace himself.

“You will not ask Martin!” she hollered,
sticking her face right up next to his, a feat that compelled her
to stand on her tiptoes. “I’m the organizer of this match and
I’ll
tell you where to go!” She’d like to tell him where to
go.

He scowled down at her; then his gaze slid
sideways until his eyes were staring at her hand gripping his arm.
“There’s no call for violence, Miss Fitzpatrick.”

“Like hell!”

Never, in all of the years she’d been
working as a model, in vaudeville, and on the Broadway stage, had
Brenda succumbed to the urge to use the foul language she heard
every day and speak the word hell aloud. She thought it all the
time, just as she silently swore like a sailor when annoyed, but
she never, ever, allowed her knowledge of profanity to taint the
air around her.

She didn’t care that she’d done so now. In
fact, she was only vaguely aware of having uttered the word. She
was too angry

“I’m not getting violent, damn you. I’m
telling you how things are. Now, if you’re going to play this game,
I’ll tell you which team to join because it’s my call.”

His lips thinned. His black eyebrows drew
down into fierce V over his nose, and those two deep creases
appeared between his eyes. Brenda experienced a sudden and violent
urge to kiss him silly. Good Lord, she was losing her mind

“Very well,” he said, although his lips
didn’t move a millimeter. He must really be furious. She told
herself she was glad. “I’ll go over and sit with Jerry’s team.”

“Good.” She gave a sharp nod, turned on her
heel, and flounced back to home plate.

Her own position in this game was nebulous.
She’d organized the teams and kidded everyone into, joining one or
the other of them. Then she’d joked around some more until she’d
succeeded, in making them accept each other as fellow human beings
instead of white men and red men. By this time, she’d succeeded so
well that they were actually being friendly with each other, but
she’d decided not to play today.

She enjoyed baseball but figured her talents
as mediator would be more appropriate for this first game on the
set of
Indian Love Song
. She hoped there would be many more
games, because sports always seemed to ease the tensions that
abounded during the production of a motion picture.

At the moment, she was acting as manager for
both teams, as well as umpire, so she took up her position behind
the plate and squinted off into the trees, slamming her fist into
her mitt and wishing she were shinning it against Colin’s head, and
hoping the guys would find the ball soon so they could get back to
playing. Her heart was thumping like an itchy dog’s hind leg, her
skin felt flushed and prickly with rage, and she wanted to rush
back to Colin Peters, hit him several times, and then throw herself
into his arms. Damn him.

“We found it!” The victorious cry came from
Martin, who crashed out of the trees and into the lodge yard, the
baseball held aloft as he spoke. “Got there just in time to save it
from being grabbed by a bear cub.”

“A bear cub? Are you serious?” Thank God for
Martin and his bear cubs. Brenda was pretty sure nothing less could
have distracted her from the villainous and entirely too appealing
Colin.

Behind her, Colin said, “It’s unwise to get
between a cub and its mother, because female bears can be ferocious
in the protection of their young.”