Dust Devil (55 page)

They compromised and settled for a hotel off the plaza.

Christina
appeared to ignore the poorly hidden look the desk clerk gave them when Chase informed him there was to be no luggage.  Once in their room, he sprawled in the chair. "Take off your clothes.”

Her breath sucked in. Excite
ment, fear, desire blazed across her countenance. Slowly she peeled away the protective layers of civilization. When she stood naked, her pale pink skin shimmering in the dark, he said, "Come here.” His hands buried in the flesh of her buttocks as he drew her against him, his lips branding her firm belly with kisses of fire.

CHAPTER 56

The two of them were seen everywhere together, and Chase had a suspicion that Christina purposely arranged for certain reporters and photographers to be at the scene when the two of them arrived. Christina’s support, and thereby her father’s, made the race of governor a closer one. The possibility that an Indian could be elected governor of the state took on more realistic proportions that interested even the national press.

Chase found in his morning’s mail a request by CBS to do a radio spot on him. "It would help your image,” Christina told him when he laughingly told her about it. And that was when he realized she was extremely serious about his winning the governorship.

Will did not seem to take Christina’s backing as lightly as Chase did. He sat on the other side of Chase’s desk, poring over a two-day old Scripps Howard column, RAFFIN HEIRESS BEATS WAR DRUM FOR INDIAN read the heading. Will slammed the folded newspaper against the desk. "I don’t like what you’re doing, Chase. It’s the last thing I’d have suspected from you — a straightforward man.”

Chase put aside the morning’s mail. "All right, what is it that has you so up in arms?”

"You’re using Christina.” Will leaned forward, his gray-shadowed jaw jutting. "It’s a form of revenge, isn't it? Marry the richest, prettiest Anglo woman in the state and become the state’s most powerful man — show those damned palefaces! You’re not doing it to better help the state — or even the Indian nation — which I might remind you is a minority.”

"But their money and resources no longer are, damn it! And I intend to see that they’re no longer stolen blind. Just as I intend to see that they are taken off welfare rolls and all the other damned programs that are crippling them
— and the state.”

Will rubbed his
wrinkled forehead. "Sorry, Chase. I guess the pressure of the last-minute details are getting to me.”

"Myself included. I don’t know if I can hold out for another month of this society bit. It’s boring me to tears.”

"What you need to do is get away on a weekend hunting trip.” Will pulled a letter from his coat pocket and tossed it across the desk. "It’s an invitation from the Elks Club in Albuquerque. They want you to speak at their next meeting. I think you ought to do it. Then take that weekend and go up into the Sandias on one of your big buffalo hunts—or whatever it is you Indians are supposed to do.”

"It’s scalping, Will,” Chase said, smiling.

"I’ve got an idea you’ve got enough pubic pelts to tie to your lance for years to come.”

"Wilbur Fa
irchild—a man of your age!” Chase said in mock disapproval, then chuckled. He shoved the letter back at Will. "Tell them I’ll come.”

That night he took Christina to the Santa Fe Opera House to see the last performance of the season, Strauss’s
Salome
. When he told Christina about the Elk invitation and his planned weekend of hunting, her lower lip thrust out in a pout. "And what am I supposed to do that weekend?”

Already the lights were lowering. "You might try working up a sweat for me,” he whispered. He laid his hand on her thigh, teasing her as she had so often teased him in public when they could not be fully observed.

"Chase, don’t!” she hissed, as he stroked just above her knee, his hand sliding up the silken thigh to loose the snap of her garter belt. Yet her hand did not push his away, and her legs shifted for the fingers that jerked on the wiry curls. But her whimper was drowned out by the tenor’s German voice soaring on stage.

Christina’s eyes were shining, her lips parted, when intermission came and they joined the elite of New Mexico in the lobby. "How about champagne?” Chase asked.

She held his arm, her hand caressing the muscles bunched just beneath the tuxedo jacket—a tuxedo that was not rented this time, since his shares in the Mercantile Bank were paying handsome dividends by now. "I don’t want to let you out of my sight,” she whispered.

Every time
he tried to break away toward the refreshment table, there were always more people that Christina was introducing him to —t he District Attorney and his wife, an oilman up from the raw boomtown of Hobbs for the opera, and an old woman in a wheelchair that Chase remembered from the night of the bank’s stockholders meeting.

"The Grand Dame of New Mexico,” Christina said. "Mrs. Rhodes, I’d like you to meet the future governor of New Mexico
— if I have anything to do with it — Chase Strawhand.”

Chase took the thin hand. "We’ve met before, at the Mercantile Bank, Mrs. Rhodes.”

"Aye, it was,” she said, her voice rich-toned but clear and sharp in spite of the press of the crowd and noise.

Chase felt as if she were measuring him, felt the power behind the wrinkled face. A power of the soul the old shaman would have called it. But there was nothing evil in it; rather a warm gentleness that surprised and intrigued him.

"You’re a man who could carry the burden of authority well,” she said. "If you’re careful.”

"That is a benediction,” Christina said. "You’ve been approved, Chase.”

But Chase felt it was more than that. There was something about the old woman. Her keen eyes fixed on him. "Perhaps Senator Raffin’s daughter has also told you I’m a patron of the arts.” She gestured to the big Mexican behind her. "Find Miguel and bring him.”

"Miguel Montoya?” Christina asked. "He’s here?”

Rosemary Rhodes nodded. "He has been scouting new talent in Paris. But he plans to set up a foundation here for New Mexico’s promising artists.”

A tall man, almost of Chase’s height but much more slender, with frost streaking the collar-length hair that was the shade of burnt cork, joined the small group. His smile made each person there feel as if he alone were singled out as the recipient. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Strawhand,” he said after the introductions were made. "I’ve seen your name quite often in the newspaper, of course, and I’ve heard Deborah mention you.”

Chase’s face never mirrored the tight knotting in his stomach when Deborah suddenly appeared at Miguel’s side, saying, "Sorry to take so long.” And the way she looked at him made the knot in Chase’s stomach wrench like a tourniquet. "I think you two know each other,” Miguel said.

If Deborah was surprised, she covered it well as she put out her hand. "Chase, it’s good to see you again.”

The most natural thing for him to have done would have been to take the petite woman in his arms, but he constrained himself. "You look lovely, Deborah,” he said and meant it. She was dressed in a single-strap white satin evening gown that dramatized her exotic dark coloring, and her long, heavy hair was swept up into a cluster of curls that adorned her small head like a queen’s crown.

"You’ve known each other a long time?” Christina asked.

"A very long time,” Chase said, his gaze holding Deborah’s. "We escaped from the Philippines together.”

Christina eyed
Deborah and asked with a smile, "Why couldn’t you have been fat and ugly?”

"At that time I don’t think Betty Grable would have interested Chase,” Deborah said, laughing, but her eyes, wary as a doe that has scented danger, did not.

"I imagine you two would have a lot to discuss,” Rosemary said as she watched the two closely.

"Have you got a moment?” Chase asked in Navajo.

"I’m sorry, Chase, but no — ”

He ignored her and took her arm. "We’ll join you in the boxes in just a minute,” he told the others.

Miguel started to say something, but Rosemary put up a restraining hand. "You must tell Christina and myself about your plans for the artists’ foundations.”

To avoid a scene Deborah was forced to go along with Chase. He pulled her into a comer near the gentlemen’s
restrooms where several of the passing men eyed her appreciatively. Deborah would not look at him but turned her head; her lips set in a firm line.

H
e put his hand against the tiled wall on either side of her, preventing her escape. "I don’t care what kind of spectacle I make, Deborah, but I want the truth.”

“
Chase, leave me alone! What happened is over.”

"Is it? You haven’t forgiven me. And if you hate me so, why did you save my life that last night on the island?”

She looked at him now, but he could read animal tracks easier than he could read her eyes. "I’m going to marry Miguel.” She pushed aside his hand and stepped out of the enclosure of his body.

* * * * *

Chase slid in behind the steering wheel, glad that the Stillwell party was over. The doctor and his wife were pompous social climbers, and Chase could well imagine what it had cost the surgeon to welcome him into his house.

A countdown of twelve days before election,
he thought grimly. Could he hold out?

He lit a cigarette and offered it to Christina who sat quietly on her side of the car. During the drive back to the Raffin mansion, the image of Deborah as she had been on Mindanao kept flashing through his brain. Her courage, her strength, her will to survive in the face of incredible odds. He wondered if he had been confusing power with strength all those years.

"All right, Chase, what is it?” Christina asked softly when they halted before the well-lit house. "I’m not going inside until you tell me what’s bothering you.”

If there was one thing about Christina that Chase admired, it was her directness. She did not waste time with polite chatter. "Christina, I may be making the biggest mistake of my life
. . . but I’m going to play the rogue and break our engagement.”

In the dim flare of the cigarettes Christina’s face whitened, but Chase went on. "My idea of marriage
— well, it’s not the same as yours, Christina. I don’t like the idea of being paraded as a house pet, something diverting and amusing for your friends.”

"I don’t feel that way!”

"I think that’s how you’ve been brought up.”

"Chase, I’ll make any change necessary. I love you and want to keep you!”

He took her hand. "I’m not anyone’s to keep.  Christina, it’s not all your fault. And it’s not fair to you either. In my own way, though I might have thought it a love of sorts, I’ve used you also. I’ve used you as the quickest road to acceptance and power. And, Christina, you deserve more than a parasitic husband.”

Her arms came up around his neck. "I don’t care, Chase! I want you!”

Gently he kissed her lips, then disengaged her arms. "Christina, I was wrong.”

Growing rage contorted her beauty. 
"You’ll regret this! I’ll see that you rue this day, Chase Strawhand!” She vaulted from the car and slammed the door. "By the time my father’s finished with you, every
jefe politico
in every precinct will blackball you. You’ll never see the inside of the governor’s office!”

Chase sat in the car and finished his cigarette. He was indeed seven kinds of a fool, he thought. Intelligence, logic, and self-interest stood side by side in his marriage to Christina. And now he stood to lose the race that he had come so close to winning.

He flicked the cigarette stub off into the darkness. Ah well, it was time he went back to the blanket. After the election was over — a little hunting, a little tiswin . . . the combination could work wonders at healing the bitterness of losing the race.

CHAPTER 57

The two people sat facing each other over the long table of mahogany that could seat at least sixty guests. The butler who served them saw only a very old woman, an invalid, and an equally old man, though the man was some twenty years the woman’s junior.

Yet these two people represented the pinnacle of power and influence wielded over the state of New Mexico. Between them they had seen the railroads usher in civilization, the gold era and oil boom enrich the state, the minor potentates who had briefly ruled the cattle kingdoms, and finally the influx of the world’s most intelligent people to create the ultimate in natural power, the atomic bomb. And these two people had had a hand in it all.

"I think my father always loved you,” Wayne Raffin said, his wheezy voice echoing in the enormous room of the Raffin mansion.

Rosemary sat looking at him, and a flicker of melancholy flared in her for the handsome man who had been Grant’s
son. Grant had loved his son, just as she had loved Stephanie. Where do we go wrong in loving? she wondered. Is it too much, not enough — or are we merely victims of fate’s whimsy?