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“Hush!” Violet whispered urgently. “Something’s coming to me!” She lifted the cup closer to her face, knitting her brows and pursing her small mouth. “It’s not terribly clear,” she said, “but I see a great change coming into your life.”
“Of course,” Miranda said with a little smile. “As I told you, I’m getting married, and after that Phillip and I will be living in London.”
“No.” Violet’s fragile voice rasped with conviction. “The change I see is one you’re not expecting and can’t prepare for. This change will shake your very soul. It will challenge all the things you’ve ever believed in!”
Miranda forced a good-natured laugh. This was all nonsense, she reminded herself. No one could look into a scattering of soggy tea leaves and read the future.
“And how will I deal with such a change?” she asked, humoring the woman. “Do the leaves tell you that?”
Violet’s eyes seemed to darken. Then she sighed and shook her head. “No. But be careful, my dear. I see danger in the leaves…and death—the death of someone close to you, perhaps, or even your own!”
“Oh, come now, my future can’t be as bleak as all that!” Miranda crumpled her napkin, tossed it down beside the half-finished bowl of porridge, and rose to her feet. “Look through the window. The sun’s come out. It’s going to be a fine morning, and I want to see the Navajos!”
“Very well, my dear.” Violet set the cup on the table, stood up, then bent to straighten her ruffled skirts and snatch up the parasol she’d left propped against a chair. “But don’t forget what I told you. When my old mammy read tea leaves, she was never wrong. She even foretold that one day I’d elope with a Yankee and be disowned by the whole family, right down to the Georgia cousins! I didn’t believe her at the time, but two years later her prediction came true!”
Miranda’s gaze lingered on the sad little figure as they crossed the mess hall and walked toward the door. Yes, the puzzle of Violet Marsden was slowly coming together. Had her marriage been worth the pain of losing her family? Glancing at the woman’s careworn face, Miranda could only wonder.
Sunlight dazzled her eyes, warming her face as they stepped onto the porch. Violet opened her parasol, frowning as she noticed that Miranda had not brought a parasol for herself.
“And no bonnet, either!” she clucked disapprovingly. “You really must take care of your skin in this desert climate, my dear girl, or the sun and wind will shrivel you like a raisin!”
But Miranda scarcely heard the well-meant advice. Her gaze was already leaping across the parade ground to the long, dark line that was forming up outside the doors of the issue house. Deny it though she might, she knew she was searching—first casually, then urgently—for a single tall, proud figure. She needed to know that he had survived the terrible night and that her interference had done him no permanent harm.
With growing desperation she scanned the line. Where was he?
Where was he?
Chapter Four
Miranda was halfway across the parade ground, holding back her stride to keep pace with Violet’s mincing steps, when she caught sight of him.
He was standing near the front of the line, his height towering a full head above the Navajos around him. A strip of crimson cloth bound his temple, more like a badge of defiance than the dressing for a wound.
Had he seen her? Miranda’s pulse skipped erratically at the thought of that sharp obsidian gaze following her across the open ground. But what did it matter? she berated herself. Last night’s encounter had been humiliating for them both. He would not welcome the sight of her—no more than she should welcome the sight of him.
“Violet, where are the other officers’ wives?” she asked in an effort to make polite conversation. “I thought we might be meeting some of them this morning.”
“Why, bless you, they’re gone. What few there were could not abide this place. They transferred out with their husbands when the garrison was cut back here. Now there’s only me. And, frankly, my dear, I’m counting the days until those filthy Navajos are shipped off to the Oklahoma Territory so Mr. Marsden and I can leave, as well.”
“And when’s that to happen?” Miranda asked, her interest suddenly roused.
“Who knows?” Violet shrugged daintily. “The rumors have been flying for months, dear, ever since General Carleton left. No one believes it’s possible to keep the Navajos here another season, not when their crops have failed three years’ running. The poor wretches are starving here, and the Indian Bureau can’t afford to keep feeding so many thousands of them! Something’s got to change, and soon, or they’ll all be dead!”
We take care of our own!
Ahkeah’s defiant words echoed in Miranda’s memory as she recalled his proud refusal to accept her cloak for his elderly aunt. What was it costing his pride to stand in line, as he was standing now, waiting with his people for his handout from the U.S. Government?
Miranda’s gaze wandered down the wretched line of people. Many of the Navajos lacked coats or blankets to protect them from the biting desert wind. The children were thin and ragged, the old men and women little more than hollow-eyed human wrecks with barely enough strength to walk. The sight of them tore at her heart.
“What are you looking at, Miranda?” Violet’s childlike voice broke into her thoughts. “Your father’s over there, at the end of the table. Do you see him?”
“Yes.” Miranda had already spotted Iron Bill, seated at the long plank table set up in front of the issue house. Behind him a platoon of blue-clad soldiers stood at rest, carbines ready in case trouble should break out and their commander gave the order to fire.
Other figures, as well, milled about the table. A bespectacled clerk was spreading pens, inkwells and a huge ledger in his allotted space. Navajo youths, pressed into service as helpers, scurried back and forth fetching chairs and supplies.
A cynical-looking man in a houndstooth check jacket stood to one side, scribbling with a pencil in an open notebook. Miranda had seen plenty of newspaper reporters during the war, and she bore them no liking. They were like hyenas, slinking along the sidelines of history, watching for the strong to fall so they could swarm in for the kill. What would a reporter be doing in a place like this? What was he waiting to see?
“We can sit just inside the door,” Violet said. “That way we’ll be out of the sun and wind. I’ll have one of Mr. Marsden’s assistants get us some chairs.”
“Thank you.” Miranda’s awareness bristled as she followed the plump figure toward the door of the vast adobe building. Her decision to come here and watch the Navajos get their rations had been a reckless impulse. Now, too late, she realized she was guilty of the same insensitivity she had so long despised in others. She should never have come here. But trying to leave now would only make matters more awkward. She had little choice except to sit and watch the humiliation of a proud man and his people. Ahkeah would hate her for it, but that was his choice, something she could not change.
Feeling his gaze on her, she raised her chin and strode toward the open doorway of the issue house.
Ahkeah’s eyes narrowed as he watched Big Hat’s daughter cross the parade ground. He should have known she would come to watch—to see the grim spectacle of eight thousand people lined up for food. Well, let her watch! She was bored here, most likely, and this was the only entertainment in fifty miles!
He watched her follow the small, plump sparrow woman to the issue house and disappear inside. He hated ration days, hated the shame of seeing his people lined up like so many sheep, swallowing their pride for the sake of their children and old ones, who would starve without these weekly handouts from the government storehouse.
Most days the quantity of food they had was barely enough to keep a dog alive. That it be wholesome and appetizing as well was far too much to ask. Lately, more often than not, there was nothing but moldy flour, which the Diné had difficulty cooking because they had so little firewood. They had been given flour for the first time just before the start of the Long Walk. Never having seen it before, they had made it into gruel, like the familiar ground corn it resembled. The gluey mess, which they’d had no choice except to eat, had sickened them so severely with cramps and diarrhea that many had died or been shot by the soldiers because they were too sick to march.
Even now, the memory of those hellish days caused Ahkeah’s jaw to tighten, triggering a throbbing pain in his injured temple. He would have been better off resting, he knew. But duty compelled him to be here.
Glancing toward the issue house, he saw that the two women had settled their chairs in the shadow of the doorway, where the desert sun would not burn their delicate skins. They were chatting animatedly, as if eager to watch the sad spectacle. His gaze lingered on the major’s silver-eyed daughter, as prim as a preacher-lady in her dark dress and white lace collar. Go ahead and watch, bilagáana woman, he thought. See us for what we are and for what your people have made us!
He was still struggling with his anger when he felt a light tugging at his sleeve. Something tightened around his heart as he glanced down into the liquid eyes of his six-year-old daughter. She did not speak, but her small fingers crept into his palm, seeking reassurance.
“Nizhoni.” He murmured her name as his hand tightened around hers. Nizhoni was too young to remember their life before the Long Walk; too young, even, to remember her mother’s smile and the sound of her voice. This white man’s purgatory was the only life that she, and so many other Diné children, knew.
What would Nizhoni’s life be like if the Diné were sent to the Oklahoma reservation? Would she ever know the joy of standing between the four sacred mountains and watching the morning sunlight steal over the peach-colored walls of Canyon de Chelly? Would she celebrate the dawn of her womanhood by blessing her people as Changing Woman?
Or would she go to the white soldiers, as so many had done, and offer her young body in exchange for a meal and a warm bed?
Instinctively he drew his little girl closer, as if to shield her from sight. She was only six, little more than a baby. But the years would fly, and before he knew it she would be a beautiful young woman. How long would he be able to keep her safe?
“Ahkeah!” Someone near the front of the line had hailed him. Trouble already, and, as usual, he was being called upon to straighten it out. The new Navajo agent, Theodore Dodd, was the first decent administrator to serve at the fort, but Dodd was a white man and, for all his good intentions, he was no miracle worker. For the Diné, little had changed. The problems continued as always.
“Ahkeah!”
“Here.” He thrust Nizhoni toward his aunt, then broke from the line and hurried forward.
Miranda edged her chair back into the shadows as Ahkeah strode toward the table. She had seen some kind of argument break out between the first Navajo in line and the small, efficient-looking man in civilian clothes who was seated at the table and appeared to be in charge. Clearly, there was a problem, but the two of them could not speak enough of each other’s language to make themselves understood.
“The man at the table is Theodore Dodd, the new Indian agent,” Violet whispered. “The Navajos call him Little Gopher. You can certainly see why, can’t you?”
Miranda nodded, straining to hear what was going on at the table.
“They have their own names for many of us,” Violet continued. “Your father is Big Hat. My husband is Lame Bear because he has a bad knee. Even I have a name. They call me Sparrow Woman.”
Again Miranda nodded, her attention on the dispute. The elderly Navajo was arguing vehemently, pointing to the burlap sack into which one of the soldiers had just dumped a measure of flour from a large barrel. More than a hundred similar barrels were stacked outside the issue house. How many would it take to feed all these people, Miranda wondered, even for a few days?
“Blast it, I’m aware of the problem, but this is what they sent us! It’s all we could get!” Dodd looked up in relief as Ahkeah broke through the crowd of Navajos and made his way to the table. “Tell him, Ahkeah. Tell them all! I’ve sent scores of wires to the bureau! They promised us beans and corn, but, blast them all to hell, this is what they sent!”
Dodd was interrupted by an outburst from the man with the sack, who then turned his outpouring of anger on Ahkeah. Ahkeah listened calmly, then turned back toward the agent. “Are you aware that this flour is full of worms?” he asked.
Dodd swore under his breath. “It wouldn’t make any difference if I had been aware. There’s nothing I could have done. I’m sorry, Ahkeah, but your people will just have to clean the flour as best they can. Now tell your friend to take his family’s share and move on.”
Ahkeah did not move. “Do the soldiers at the fort have to pick the worms out of their flour?” he demanded. “Or do the bilagáana think themselves too fine to eat what they provide for us?”
Dodd looked pained. The Navajo who’d first complained turned around and began talking to others in the line. The soldiers behind the table shifted nervously, fingering their carbines.
Miranda felt her throat tighten in apprehension. Ahkeah, she knew, was using this incident to make a statement of pride. But pride would not feed eight thousand starving people. If the Navajos didn’t accept the flour, they would go hungry. Was that what Ahkeah wanted? To trigger an incident for the benefit of that sleazy reporter—an incident that would call public attention to the plight of his people? Or was he merely a troublemaker, a reckless firebrand with more pride than common sense?
“You, Major.” He wheeled suddenly to face Miranda’s father. “You have a daughter. So do I. How can you ask me to feed my daughter what you would not feed your own?”
The silence that followed was broken only by the raucous call of a passing crow. Miranda saw Iron Bill’s neck and ears redden, a sure sign of rising impatience.
“I asked you a question, Major.” Ahkeah’s voice was as flat and as cold as the blade of a knife. “I’ve met your daughter, and I know her to be a fine and proper lady. Would you expect her to eat bread made from this flour?”
Miranda could sense her father’s anger welling. She could see it in the bristling eyebrows and in the clenched fist that rested on the table. She could feel her own tension building as she waited for the explosion…
The explosion that would be exactly what Ahkeah wanted.
“Why don’t you ask me that question?” The words burst out as Miranda rose to her feet. All eyes were suddenly on her—Ahkeah’s eyes, coldly challenging; her father’s eyes, startled and outraged; the reporter’s eyes, narrowing as he flipped to a fresh page in his notebook.
“Miss Howell?” Ahkeah’s voice dripped ice.
“Ask me your question,” she said. “I can answer for myself.”
“As you like.” His contemptuous gaze measured her, testing her mettle. “Would you eat this?” He filled a scoop from the open flour barrel and thrust it under her nose. Miranda fought the urge to recoil as the surface of the flour stirred slightly and a small, tan insect fluttered upward, past her face.
“If I were starving and there was nothing else, yes, I would eat this flour!” Miranda declared. “And if I had hungry children, yes, I would give it to them! I would give them anything to keep them alive!”
“Very passionately spoken.” Ahkeah glanced at the circle of listeners, playing to them with the skill of a politician. “But you aren’t starving, are you, Miss Howell? I saw you come directly here from the mess hall. Is this what you had for breakfast?”
“No.” Miranda remembered the gluey, tasteless oatmeal. Ahkeah, she knew, was intent on using her. He would take advantage of her natural squeamishness to make fools of Agent Dodd, her father and the U.S. Government. There was just one way to stop him—a way that lay before her now in a scoopful of weevil-infested flour.
Swallowing hard, she forced herself to meet his cold eyes. “If I show you that I’m not too proud to eat this flour, will that satisfy you, Ahkeah? Will you then be still and allow your people to get their rations without shame?”
A spark flickered in the depths of Ahkeah’s obsidian eyes, but his face remained as impassive as granite. “You, a bilagáana, would dare such a thing?”
Without answering him she turned to one of the soldiers. “Take a cup of this flour to the kitchen and ask the cook to make one flapjack—”
“No,” Ahkeah interrupted sharply. “We will do the cooking right here, where all the people can see.” Turning to the openmouthed private, he ordered firewood, an iron skillet, salt, baking powder, a spoon and a measure of lard. Spurred by the authority in his voice, the young soldier scurried to do his bidding.
Miranda glanced toward her father. Iron Bill’s rigid face was flushed like an overheated stove. His lips were pressed tightly together as if to hold back an outburst of ill-timed rage. He would not be so foolish as to speak out, nor would Agent Dodd, who was staring at Miranda as if she’d just sprouted wings and a tail. The news reporter was waiting, pencil poised to scribble down every reckless word, giving Ahkeah just the ammunition he needed for his publicized incident—an incident that would cause a whole nation of men, women and children to go hungry for the sake of pride.
By the time the ingredients and utensils arrived from the kitchen, Ahkeah had started a small, crackling fire in a shallow pit. Miranda watched in grim silence as he measured the flour, salt and baking powder into the bowl. She had hoped he would take time to sift the weevils out of the flour, but she should have known better. He would not make this easy for her.
Glancing up, he added a splash of water and a scoop of lard and began to knead the fist-size mass with his fingers. “This is how we make our bread,” he said. “With no yeast and no ovens. If the flour is fresh it isn’t so bad. But with this…”
Letting the words trail off, he dropped the rest of the lard into the skillet. As it melted, he made a flat circle of the dough, as broad as his hand was long, and dropped it into the sizzling fat.
“Don’t worry about the worms, Miss Howell,” he said, “the heat will kill anything living in that flour. Besides, you look as if you could use a little meat in your diet.”
The flat bread browned swiftly. Ahkeah turned it with his knife, then used the point to lift it free and hold it in the cool air for a moment.
“Here you are.” He thrust the bread toward Miranda with a mocking flourish.
Miranda accepted it gingerly between her fingertips. The fried bread was hot, but not hot enough to burn. She forced her eyes to blur so she would not have to look at it too closely. It would not be so bad, she reassured herself. She had surely done more distasteful things than this in her lifetime. And if she felt anything crunch between her teeth she would simply pretend it was a nut or a raisin.
Struggling to appear nonchalant, she sank her teeth into the warm, crisp dough. Every eye was on her as she moved her jaws in a semblance of chewing, then swallowed the small wad of dough in a single gulp.
“All of it,” Ahkeah growled, close to her ear. “You’re to eat every last crumb.”
Miranda tore off another small bite, meeting his gaze as she forced herself to swallow. His eyes held hers so intently that she could see her own reflection in the depths of his jet-black pupils. She could understand now why her father hated this man and why the soldier had been on the verge of shooting him last night.
Now he was waiting for her to slip—to gag, to choke or to fling the bread to the ground in disgust. But no, she would not let him win. Pride was one thing. Letting children go hungry was quite another.
Bit by bit she finished the bread, swallowing each piece as an act of sheer will. She avoided biting down or even touching the dough with her tongue. If she were to find a weevil in her mouth, her hard-won control would be lost. Ahkeah watched her every move, his eyes smoldering, his mouth twisted in a thin, humorless smile.
A gasp of relief broke over the assembly as the last bit of bread disappeared into her mouth. Miranda forced it down her convulsing throat. Done.
Flashing Ahkeah a defiant look, she glanced around frantically for water. It was Ahkeah himself who passed her a canteen. “Right from the Pecos River,” he murmured. “Just like the water we drink. Well done, Miss Howell. You’ve proved your point.”
He jerked his head in an affirming nod, and the Navajos at the front of the line spread out along the stations at the table, sacks open to receive their ration of tainted flour. Miranda gulped the brackish water, her stomach churning as people milled around her. Had she done the right thing, or should she have allowed a stubborn man his pride? Never mind, what was done was done. And suddenly she wanted nothing more than to get as far as she could from this miserable place.
“Miss Howell?” The reporter shouldered his way into her path as she turned to leave. His eyes were a watery blue, and a splintered hickory toothpick jutted from between his thin lips. “My name is Hyrum Blount, Miss Howell. Your quick action prevented an incident that could have turned very ugly. What do you have to say to readers of the Denver Post?”
Bile rose in Miranda’s throat as she turned on him. “Are you disappointed, Mr. Blount?” she flared. “Would you rather have seen a hunger strike, or better yet, a bloodbath? Would that have made a more sensational story to wire home to your paper?”
The reporter’s startled face blurred in Miranda’s vision as she felt the greasy bread and alkaline water welling up into her throat.
“Miss Howell, are you all right?”
Shoving the man aside, she stumbled around the end of the table and bolted for the back side of the issue house.
A ghost of a smile teased Ahkeah’s lips as he watched her go. It did not surprise him that Miranda Howell was sick. But his amazement at her boldness and tenacity warmed to a grudging admiration. For a bilagáana, the woman had courage.
Would he have pushed a confrontation over the flour if she had not come forward? He shrugged—a white man’s gesture that he had never quite managed to lose. His people had eaten far worse than infested flour in their four years at the fort. Perhaps it was just as well that nothing more had happened. At least their bellies would not be empty this week.
He stood at the corner of the long table, aching as his gaze wandered down the long, sad lines of his people. Even the great warriors, Manuelito and Barboncito, were here. They had surrendered with their starved little bands only a few moons after the main body of the Diné had reached the fort. Now they stood gripping their ration sacks with the others, the cold spring wind whipping their threadbare clothes against their bones.
On ration day, all the Diné at the fort were required to come in and be counted, to make sure none had slipped away. Not that the bureau had any reason to worry. Of the few families who’d attempted to leave, all had either returned, starving, on their own or been hauled back on a wagon bed, their frozen bodies stacked like cordwood.
Would life be like this in the Oklahoma Territories, or would conditions be even worse? The only thing the Diné knew for certain was that they would be even farther from their four sacred mountains—so far that the Holy People would never bless them again.
Shaking off his gloom, Ahkeah scanned the line for his own small family. He glimpsed his aunt, standing where he’d left her, bundled in the woolen poncho he’d placed around her shoulders the night before. She looked lost and weary. Maybe it was time he found someone else to help care for Nizhoni. The old woman was growing too frail to keep up with an active little girl.
Glancing around, he concluded that there would be no more trouble with the rationing. The major’s strong-willed daughter had seen to that. It would be safe to relieve the old woman of Nizhoni and walk the little girl around the fort. She loved seeing the horses in their corrals and the colorful American flag fluttering from its pole on the parade ground. There was so little color in her own drab life—no blooming wildflowers against warm russet sand, no flash of silver jewelry, no bright ribbons in her long black hair. He had no heart to deny his child the little pleasure she found in this dismal place.
