Dust Devil (50 page)

One morning, after one of Herrera’s visits the day before, Chase stepped out onto the veranda, feeling really good about the day. Herrera had brought a razor, soap, two bottles of rice
sake
, and three Hershey’s chocolate bars . . . and the news that the American Pacific Force had taken Guadalcanal in its drive to retake the Philippines.

But Chase’s smile faded as his gaze fell on Deborah below, kneeling at the small fire with the duck flapping and quacking about her. Not only had Deborah tied her shirttail beneath her high breasts, revealing her small waist and flat
stomach, but she also had whacked off her trousers high on her thighs. Standing on the platform, he could look down the cleavage of her melon-ripe breasts.

Sensing his presence, she
glanced up to meet his frown.

"What’s taking you so long?” he asked sourly.

Deborah looked back to the duck egg she fried in coconut oil. "I had trouble getting the fire going — the Japanese matches don’t work very well.” She glanced up again. The usually tilted corners of her mouth for once pulled down in irritation. "Besides, you didn’t cut enough kindling — which I might remind you, you promised to do yesterday!”

"You’re beginning to sound like a nag
— I feel sorry for Red Tail!”

"Red Bird!”
she shouted after him as he disappeared back into the hut. "And I think Christina’s lucky she didn’t get stuck here with you. You bore me, do you hear!”

He
reappeared with the bolo and looked down at the scantily dressed child-woman. I’d like to bore you; then he wished he could wipe the thought from his mind like chalk from a blackboard. But he could not. The thought had taken root and now grew in the dark recesses of his brain like the poisonous mushroom, and it was fed by merely the sight of her — and the sound of her voice and the smell of her skin and hair. She pervaded the hut even when she was not in it. "I’m going for your damn precious kindling,” he said and descended the steps two at a time. "And get some clothes on!” he snapped when he passed by, not looking at her.

"And you think you’re Adolph Menjou in that breech-cloth?” she shrilled after him.

He continued on but some sixth sense made his spin around.  She had picked up the cracked skillet and hurled it at him.

The skillet missed, but some of the hot grease popped on his back.
He dropped the bolo.  The fury in his black eyes glowed hotter than the coals in the fire. She backed away. He went after her, diving for her legs as she turned to run.

Her breath exploded from her lungs as she hit the ground. "If you were a man, I’d slug you!” Chase said, straddling her.

"You’re no more a man than — than that duck Herrera calls a male!”

Chase’s
palm jerked back . . . and halted. In that second all his keen senses prickled with the acute consciousness of the woman he straddled.

She
blinked back her tears. "Why can’t we just be friends like we used to be?” she whispered, unaware still of the war that raged between his conscience and the desire that enflamed him. "Why do we have to be either enemies or . . .  her voice faltered.

"Lovers?” Chase finished for her, his face cast in a steely mold. Wordlessly he staggered from her and picked up the bolo as he left the clearing.

That night they tried to pretend that nothing had happened. Deborah prepared brown rice with tea leaves, while Chase turned his attention to the shirt of mosquito netting he was fashioning. The flare of the burning
copra
cast a soft intimate light over the small room. Like a couple who had been married for years they talked of unimportant things — the approach of the monsoon season, his sudden craving for fresh cow’s milk, her desire for a mirror.

After dinner
he broke out the
sake
. "Here’s to rescue,” he said, and the two touched their
sake
-filled, hollowed coconut shells together in a toast.

"What do you plan to do when you get back to the States?”
she asked after a couple of sips from the shell.

The sake tasted terrible, he thought, but it was a treat, something special to break the monotony of their days and nights.
  He allowed himself a small laugh and noted that it startled her.  “Do I laugh so rarely?”

Her expression was guarded.  “Yes.”

"You won’t believe it,” he said, taking another swallow. "I’m going to use the back pay I’ve got coming to me and open a bank. I learned a little bit about financing from a colonel at Cabanatuan.”

Chase had surprised himself, because until the words were actually spoken he had not really given it that much serious thought. But now, on reflection, it seemed like a pretty good idea. He didn’t know of any other Indian-managed banks. "And you?”

She took another sip of the sake. "I still intend to have a painting career one day. My own one-woman exhibition.” She shrugged and her lips turned upward in a small smile. "We can at least dream, can’t we?” She lifted her shell and said, "Here’s to our dreams — banking and painting,” and gulped the last of the
sake
.

She knelt to refill her shell, and
he noticed the way her cut-offs cupped her small, firmly rounded buttocks. He felt the hardening in his crotch. If rescue was much longer in coming, he told himself, he’d have to seek out one of the stocky Manobo women, though the idea of contributing his head to the headhunters’ soup did not seem worth his body’s demand for sexual release.

Sometime after midnight, when their bursts of conversation began to lengthen with interludes of drowsiness, they
finished off the first bottle of
sake
and retired to their separate mats. But just as Chase was falling into a deep, pleasant sleep, the mosquitos began to attack. He suddenly realized that in his drunken stupor he had forgotten to draw the mosquito net closed.

Deborah was slapping at her arms and face, and
he felt like he was being eaten alive by the swarm. His usual natural immunity seemed to have disappeared.

When
she scrambled to her knees and headed for the door, he yanked her back. "It’s worse outside!”

He dropped the
abaca
cloth over the doorway and pulled her back to her mat, cursing as he stumbled over one of the coconut shells. It seemed his feet would not move properly, and he could have sworn the mats were in a different place.

Grimly he eyed the one shroud of netting that hung from the thatched roof, then pulled Deborah inside along with the two mats.

"Just one snow—that’s all I ask, just one good snow,” she mumbled, drowsy with the effects of the
sake
, as she stretched out on the mat alongside him.

Now that she had abbreviated her attire,
he could feel her bare skin against his, and his hands slipped around her waist, touching skin as satiny and dusky as a summer rose. He waxed into heat, the desire igniting in him like a wildfire.

She
stirred and stiffened as his urgent hands cupped her breasts, burning her skin through the thin cotton material. His thumb and forefinger captured one nipple, then slipped down the center of her small rib cage to the band of her cut-offs.

In the
dimness he could barely make out her stricken expression as the realization of what he intended seeped through the intoxicated haze of her mind, yet he couldn’t seem to slam on the brake. "I thought I’d never make it through the day without touching you,” he rasped, not fully aware it was his own passion-drugged voice he heard. His fingers snapped the waistband open and slid down the soft, flat stomach to entwine in the fine curly hair as his mouth closed savagely over her soft, protesting lips.

She
wrenched her mouth away and murmured something about incest. His fingers bit into her arms as she tried to twist free. "Chase, don’t!” she begged. "You’ll destroy us!” But it was too late. He was already past caring. All reasoning was lost in the lust that swept through him.

She
beat on him with clenched fists and cursed him. But when he yanked away the clothing that stood between them, she gave up her fight as if prepared to enduring the hard, thrusting ravishment of her body.  That single act sobered him.  But when he went to move away her arms around his waist and back held him fast to her.  With that his passion was unleashed, and he could not but take them both to the brink of heaven and hell.

Later, he
went out onto the veranda to cool the fire in his flesh. He could not believe what he had done. One hand rubbed at his eyes, oblivious to the few stings of the remaining mosquitos that had not departed with the swarm. He cast a troubled glance back at her. She lay there, face down, unmoving.

He turned away, both ashamed and confused, for he could have sworn she enjoyed the act. Yet he could feel the hate pulsating within the room. He dropped down on his haunches, thinking, figuring. He sensed vaguely that something was lost, but he could not identify it. "Deborah,” he began, "I don’t
— ”

Instinct made him look around. Deborah had sprung to her feet, grabbing at the bolo in her ascent, and rushed at him. In that split second he was reminded of their ancestors whose fierce warrior blood ran in both their veins.

He dodged her first thrust and slid in under her arm and behind her, seizing her about her waist from the rear. She fought and struggled. Her arms and legs flailed the air until she was out of breath and her fury subsided. The bolo clattered on the floor. Chase was sure he heard a strangled sob, but there followed only the muted chatter of the forest’s birds.

"Now listen to me, Deborah,” he said, exasperated. "I’m sorry about what happened. I’d change it if I could. I can’t. But I promise you it’ll
— ”

"You bastard!”

She squirmed, and he dropped her, more from surprise than from her squirming. She whirled on him. Small of stature but filled with a regal dignity her anger could not alter, she stood facing him. Her eyes were bright brown stones. "If you had wanted me — for me — it might have been different. But to violate me out of sheer animal lust — when you’ve never gotten Christina Raffin out of your mind, her name still on your lips even — ”

Her
anger was raging once more like a second volcanic eruption. She stopped and started again. "You don’t need to promise me anything, because if you so much as touch me, Chase Strawhand, I’ll not rest until your bones are buried!”

CHAPTER 52

The disappearance of Donald the next morning was as good an excuse as any for Chase and Deborah to escape the hut’s confinement as they searched the area’s undergrowth in ever-widening circles. Chase was always careful to keep Deborah in sight but made no effort to break her tight-lipped silence.

He was confused by her anger, for despite the fact he had forced himself on her, he was very aware of her active participation toward the last. And he did not think her anger had very much to do with the taboo of tribal incest.
His irritation grew with the passing of the morning. How could she condemn him when she had enjoyed it? How could she bring up his involvement with Christina when she was engaged to Red Bird?

At last he convinced Deborah to give up the hunt, that Donald had probably followed the mosquito swarm the night before in hopes of another insect feast. Reluctantly they turned their footsteps toward the hut. The bleakness in
her eyes worried him, but any effort he made to console her he knew would be rejected.

When they arrived at the hut Herrera stood in the clearing, shifting from one foot to the other as Donald pecked furiously at his toes. "Donald!” Deborah cried and ran to gather the duck in her arms.

"Where you been?” Herrera exclaimed. "I lookee everywhere! I told you no leave!” He thrust a pair of field glasses at Chase. "Lookee! Now we have trouble!”

Chase raised the binoculars and looked out to sea. In the gulf armed launches, light cruisers, and other transports, all bearing the flag with the red sun, lurked like sea serpents.

Herrera wiped at the sweat that rolled down out of the fur-lined helmet onto his brown face. "If they land, you must hide. I come back tomorrow. Maybe later, maybe before, and take you another place.”

Both watched him leave, dreading being alone with each other again. Dismally Chase wondered how much longer the two of them could keep their sanity before they tore each other apart. He watched Deborah enter the hut, noting the
scornful tilt of her chin, and knew that help had to come soon. He couldn’t sleep in the same room with her without wanting her, without taking her.

But that night he found he did not have to worry about his raging lust, for chills and fever claimed his body, racking him and leaving him weak. It had been almost three months since his last bout with malaria, and he had hoped he had licked the disease with the quinine tablets Spec had gotten for him.
  Just maybe Deborah would, indeed bury his bones.

* * * * *

Deborah could hear Chase groan and toss on his mat. Even from the distance of inches that separated them she could feel the fever that flared off him like heat off a copra torch. Touching his scalding skin, she despaired.