Deep Purple (9 page)

CHAPTER 12

“
M
iss Howard,” Elizabeth interrupted in her cold, starchy voice.

Brigham halted in midsentence the old edition of the Arizona Miner Catherine was having him read aloud from, while Abigail
’s pen paused in the middle of copying a paragraph from Swinton’s
A Complete Course in Geography
.

Catherine ros
e from behind the dining-room table, where class was held now that the late-summer rains cascaded over the thirsty earth. “Yes, Mrs. Godwin?”

The woman clasped her dry hands, the fingers folded as tightly as her thin lips. “
I’d like to talk to you—alone.” Catherine nodded to the children. “Why don’t you two have Loco fix you an early lunch, and then you can play awhile before we go back to work.”

Delighted at the reprieve, the children scrambled from the room, and Catherine was left alone with Elizabeth.

“I shall get right to the point, Miss Howard. I know you are trying to seduce my son. Oh, don’t bother to act surprised,” she continued, her voice cracking with anger. “I overheard you and Sherrod in the courtyard the night before last.”

Catherine's hands cl
enched the table’s edge. “Mrs. Godwin, I resent both your prying and your accusation.”

“
And I resent you because you are jeopardizing Sherrod’s future.”

Elizabeth's blazing eyes met Catherine
’s in a battle of wills as the Mormon woman recalled facing another young woman years before—a young woman who would have taken her husband from her; no, who did take Frank for a while. But fate had intervened, and the other woman had died, leaving Elizabeth her husband once more . . . and Cristo Rey.

“
I don’t care to continue this conversation,” Catherine said.

“
But you will,” Elizabeth said, moving a step closer. “And what’s more, you will leave Cristo Rey. I don’t care what reason you give the others. But I want you to leave.”

“
And if I should refuse?”

“
I'm giving you credit for intelligence, Miss Howard. I don’t think you'd willingly become a Mormon in order to marry Sherrod and be a second wife. I know what it’s like to share your husband, and I don't think your type of woman would like it. And I won’t permit Sherrod to divorce Lucy and marry you.”

The woman's wrinkled lids narrowed over stonelike pupils. “
You see, in my husband's old age he has remembered his duties to the Church, and he would most certainly disown Sherrod if he divorced Lucy. Sherrod might give up Lucy for you, but I'd never let him give up Cristo Rey for you ... or any other woman. So, Miss Howard, I want you to leave now before this affair goes any further."

“
Sherrod has a mind of his own, Mrs. Godwin.”

Elizabeth s
miled, a sneer really. “Do you think my son or my husband would permit you to stay if they knew you were having an affair with Law? Fornicating beneath the very eyes of the children!”

Catherine's eyes widened. “
That’s not the way it—”

“
It doesn’t matter whether it’s the truth or not. Sherrod’s own child saw Law kiss you the night of the fiesta. I myself overheard Abigail tell Brigham about it. And I saw you two returning from a ride together. Do you think Sherrod or my husband would believe your word against Abigail’s and mine?”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It could be worse, Catherine thought, as she swallowed the last of the after-dinner chocolate. By leaving, she was removing herself from Law’s tempting presence. Of course, there existed the problem of earning enough to support herself, and her mother and sister, if she taught in Tucson.

As badly as the territory needed teachers, no one but the very wealthy could afford one until the territorial legislature was able to pass a bill funding public schools. With the financial h
avoc wreaked by the Civil War, the possibility of that funding appeared dim for the near future.

Good Lord, a hundred lawyers in the territory and not one doctor or teacher! Still, she was one of the few white women in the Arizona Territory. Surely in Tucs
on she would be able to find a husband.

She wished now she had not chosen the time after dinner to tell the family of her decision to leave, for Law was there tonight
—sitting opposite her, one booted foot crossed over his knee. He would think she was running from him. Was she?

She sat her empty cup aside, saying, “
I feel this is the best time—since all the family is together—to tell you that, as much as I hate to, I am going to have to leave Cristo Rey.”

Audible gasps filled the room, and she rushed on. "I
feel what I am doing, teaching, would have more impact if I taught as many children as possible. And, of course, there are so many children in Tucson alone who do not even know how to write their names.”

She looked now to Don Francisco. The old man, for al
l his age, was no less astute. She would have to sound convincing. “I know it will be an imposition for you, Don Francisco, after all the trouble you went to in order to bring me out here, but I feel Abigail and Brigham already know so much more than I would have hoped to accomplish with them in just six months. Lucy, if you’ll just make them practice . . .”

Her voice trailed off as Abigail and Brigham both jumped to their feet and ran to her side. “
No,” Brigham said, grabbing at her forearm, “you can't leave!”

“
Are you certain this is the best thing for you?” Sherrod asked.

Catherine colored. She was sure everyone in the room heard the torture in his voice and guessed he was in love with her. She glanced at Lucy, but Sherrod
’s wife only looked bewildered and slightly distressed at the suggestion that the responsibility for her children would be hers again. Catherine’s gaze slid on over to Law—and, naturally, there was the cynical crook to one side of his mouth. Yes, he obviously guessed Sherrod’s secret.

Onl
y Elizabeth wore a satisfied smile. “Of course she is certain what’s best for her, son.”

“
Cristo Rey needs you," Don Francisco said at last, “but I think it is important you do what you believe you have to. Miss Howard. It takes courage to make changes, and you have courage.”

"Thank you, Don Francisco,”
Catherine said quietly. Her arms encircled the two children, who knelt on either side of her. She wished she could protect them from the future, from the apathetic mother and the domineering grandmother. But then she had been no more successful herself in holding her own against Elizabeth. Yet there was such a word as justice. Surely one day it would prevail against people like Elizabeth Godwin.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The change was much easier to accomplish than Catherine had foreseen. She had worried about finding a place in Tucson, for every available domicile was requisitioned by officers from the army supply depot at Camp Lowell, just outside the city walls.

Fortun
ately Sherrod remembered an old adobe—the roof was crumbling over in the kitchen, he warned her. The last occupant, a miner, had abandoned the place for more lucrative veins in Colorado the month before when Sherrod was last in Tucson. He was sure she could arrange to buy the adobe for a small sum from Sam Hughes, who rented it out. A note would be sent to Sam on the next freight wagon into Tucson, he promised.

He even volunteered to drive her into Tucson, when the time came for her to leave. She saw no har
m in it, especially since she suggested that Lucy and the children accompany them. She would have thought Lucy would be delighted to visit Tucson, as provincial as the frontier outpost was. But Lucy pleaded a headache, and only Brigham and Abigail, excited at the prospect of staying overnight in Tucson, went along.

For a while Catherine and Sherrod talked about inconsequential things. He spoke of Tucson's desperate need for water and sewerage and the great potential the territory had if it could ever become
a state. "Arizona has the five C’s,” he said in a forced attempt at lightheartedness. "Cattle, cotton, climate, copper, and citrus . . . but, like hell, it doesn't have water.”

Catherine discussed what the children would need to study before they went off
to boarding school, but he interrupted her midway, saying in a tight voice, “Catherine . . . are you leaving because of me?”

She glanced at Abigail, who was asleep, her head bobbing on Catherine
’s shoulder, and Brigham, who lay stretched out in the wagon’s bed, his body wedged between Catherine’s trunk and carpetbag. “No," she said quietly, “I’m leaving because of me. I want what every woman wants, Sherrod. A husband and children of my own to love. That’s something I would not find at Cristo Rey.”

Sam Hugh
es’s house seemed as crude as the other adobes that fronted the narrow streets inside Tucson’s presidio walls, only perhaps a bit larger viewed from the outside. Inside it was airy and cool with gray jerga rugs on the hard-packed dirt floors and brightly colored blankets piled against the whitewashed walls for sofas and later for sleeping.

Atanacia ran out to greet Catherine and led her into the tree-shaded courtyard. She pressed a glass of
limonada
on Catherine and the children, saying, “Sherrod and Sam, they say they will go to the store, but, bah!” She snapped her small fingers. “They go to the cantinas to drink, I betcha!”

Contrary to Atanacia
’s predictions, the two men returned early enough to enjoy a dinner of stewed mutton and baked pears prepared quite expertly by the thirteen-year-old girl. It was difficult for Catherine to believe Atanacia was only a little older than Abigail, who still played with dolls.

When Catherine commented on this fact, Atanacia said, “
But I am the oldest of eleven children. I had to learn early. At nine I was going to Sam’s store and myself cutting a pound of beef from the slabs he hung on the timbers outside his store.”

As usual the talk turned to the latest Apache depredations and the Union soldiers' trade that improved bus
iness before Atanacia rolled out the blankets for the men, who would sleep in the main room, which was also the kitchen. Catherine and the children would sleep with Atanacia in the bedroom.

The next morning was almost as difficult for Catherine as the day
she had parted with her mother and Margaret. She hugged each of the children and gave Abigail a copy of Lewis Carroll’s
Through the Looking Glass
and Brigham Washington Irving’s
Sketchbook
.

Before Sherrod climbed into the blackboard, he took her hand. That
early in the morning, people were already out and teams of freight wagons crowded the streets leading to the plaza and were backed up outside the city’s walls. “I don’t think you fully realize that Tucson is a virtual Sodom and Gomorrah,” he said, his blue eyes dark with concern. ‘‘If you looked the world over you couldn’t find a more degraded sort of villains than Tucson society, Catherine. Please, be careful.”

He lowered his voice then, so Brigham and Abigail would not hear him. "You know how I feel abou
t you won’t change, my darling. If you should need me, you know I’ll come.”

CHAPTER 13

I
t was not much, the adobe hut, a
jacale
that faced flush with Calle de la India Trieste, the Street of the Sad Indian Girl. But Sam had let her have the adobe for almost nothing, leaving Catherine still with a little savings.

Though the
jacale
set outside the presidio's walls, thus presenting a long walk to the plaza’s stores, it was close to El Ojito, an artesian spring: so she would not have to pay ten cents a bucket for fresh water as the citizens inside the Old Pueblo did.

A long main room in the front of the
jacale
was buttressed by a minuscule bedroom and another room which was really an open kitchen, since there was no roof and only a partial wall on the north side. But it was a beginning. It was her own home.

Together she and Atanacia worked to clear the rubble from the main room, where Catherine would teach her students. Except for the beehive fireplace in one corner, the room was bare. Atanacia had tak
en her to Solomon Warner’s general store to purchase blankets and tinware, and Juan Elias had donated from his store a hemp bed that Atanacia covered with a flax bedspread.

When the hard-packed earth was swept clean with the mesquite brush brooms bought fr
om a Pima Indian woman and burlap was spread for rugs, Catherine stepped back, hands on her hips, and surveyed the first day’s work. “It doesn’t look half bad, Atanacia. Rather beautiful, in fact, wouldn’t you say?”

Atanacia tilted her head to one side, her eyes shining with mischief. “
Si
, both you and the room.”

Catherine blushed and wiped at the dirt on her face, smudging one cheek. She glanced down at the dust on her hands and wiped them on her apron. “
I guess I look a mess.”

Atanacia studied her new friend critically. The cotton handkerchief about the young American woman
’s head emphasized the fine bone structure and the large, luminous eyes that dominated the pale, camilla-like complexion. “No,
amiga
, you are
muy bonita
, truly. Why have you never married?” She clapped her hand over her naturally pink lips. “Oh, how
malcreado
! How ill-bred of me!”

Catherine laughed at the screwed-up face, the face of the child Atanacia was. “
Honestly. Atanacia, I’m glad someone asked. Always before I could sense the stares and felt people’s pity, and no one bothered to ask. The fact is, I have never met a man whom I wanted to marry . . . and who wanted to marry me also. It takes two to make a wedding.”

“
Burros, the men are! But there are so many hombres in Tucson. Look!” She grasped Catherine’s arm and pulled her over to the small window, moving aside the fringe of leather strips. “There, see! ”

Catherine
’s gaze swept over the randomly scattered adobes on the other side of the street, their windows like tired eyes closed against the brilliant sun. To the left, past the far cornfield, three Indian women washed clothes in the
acequia
running from the Santa Cruz River. Beyond was Solomon Warner's stone flour mill and Sentinel Mountain.

Of
f to the right of Catherine’s adobe, two Mexicans, smoking their cornhusk cigarillos, sat propped against a wheel of one of the many freight wagons that camped on the outskirts of town, near the Tully and Ochoa corrals.

Directly in front of Catherine, four
or five men, adventurers if their scrubby beards and grease-blackened buckskins were any clue, lounged beneath the semi-shade of Juan Bueriel’s Mescal Saloon. “What are you talking about?”

"
Idiota
!” Atanacia exclaimed with affection. “At this time of afternoon they would usually be asleep under some wagon or up at the plaza drinking the mescal and playing the monte. But no, they are here, waiting for you to come out. To only see a white woman is enough. Soon they will be at your door, courting you.”

Cather
ine pulled the handkerchief from her head with a smile. “Well, in that case, I had better make myself presentable.”

Atanacia prophesied accurately, for within the week three men, a prospector and two cavalrymen, called upon Catherine, ostensibly to ask if
she needed any help in “settling in.”

She politely thanked them while mentally making a file of each man
’s name and appearance and explained that at the moment she required no help.

Her plans for tutoring were working out just as successfully. Already she
had twelve students coming each morning (all Mexicans and all boys), thanks to both Sherrod’s and Sam’s propaganda. Out of her own pocket she supplied the slates at twenty-five cents each. She charged the parents of each student three dollars a month, which barely covered her cost of living, for supplies in Tucson were ridiculously high because of the cost of freighting from the East.

After one o
’clock, when school was recessed for the day, she attended to the myriad tasks that a servant otherwise would have performed—filling the lamps and cleaning their chimneys, buying the scuttle of coal for the day's cooking, and, last, sprinkling the earthen floors with water to keep down the dust that was as fine and gray as talcum.

Often she had dinner with the Hughes
es. She never had time to be lonely, for almost daily she would have a gentleman caller who would sit on the crude bench made by Sam and padded with fuchsia cushions sewn by Atanacia. The gentlemen who called would twist their hats in their hands and mumble polite phrases about the nice weather (warm days and cool nights now that October was upon the little mud city). Soon thereafter the gentlemen would make their departures, leaving her in a state of amusement. Not even the beauteous Margaret had ever received so many callers!

With her days filled, Catherine found herself lonely only at night when, after she had reread Sir Walter Scott's
Ivanhoe
for perhaps the fourth time or one of Lord Byron’s romantic poems, she went to bed. For a while she lay there, the darkness encouraging her loneliness. She could imagine herself growing old and lonely, the spinster schoolmarm.

And always with that thought, she would think of Law. A bitter taste would fil
l her mouth—a taste that did not prevent her lips from remembering the pleasure they had known beneath his lips. She really must stop reading that romantic literature!

Every morning she awoke early to find some stranger sleeping outside her doorway. After
this happened four or five times, with a different slumberer across the doorstep on each occasion, she began to realize that the male society of Tucson had apparently taken it upon themselves to protect their fair neighbor.

Some mornings she would maybe fi
nd an old white-haired Mexican, his face covered by a floppy sombrero and his body draped with a Papago blanket. Other mornings would bring forth a hulking cowboy with a mountain of a hangover. Catherine would awaken her protector, give him a breakfast of bacon and tomatoes or, if he was lucky, potatoes and chiles
colorados
(eggs were almost impossible to obtain), and send the man on his way.

As October passed into November and November into December and the days and the nights turned only slightly more chi
lly with still the day’s bright sunshine, she began to receive two gentlemen whom she actually could consider marriageable material.

One, Lionel McCrary, was an attorney who had read law in Pennsylvania until the lure of the West
’s opportunities had seized him fifteen years earlier. Though the slender wiry man was almost as old as her father, approaching forty, he was the first man in Tucson she found she could converse with intelligently.

After the first three or four times Lionel called on her, she allowe
d him to escort her to Tucson's only restaurant comparable to those in the States, the Shoo Fly, so called because the Mexican boys always carried fly swatters with their trays. For Catherine the outing was a special treat, and she found herself laughing at Lionel’s anecdotes about the town’s citizenry, especially the American men who inhabited the Old Pueblo—twelve Anglos with the exception of the transient army personnel.

“
Take Mark Aldrich,” Lionel told her over dinner one evening. “He’s Tucson’s first American
alcalde
—that is, justice of the peace. He’s married to Margaret Wilkinson, who is living in your hometown, Baltimore.”

“
I believe I’ve heard the name,” Catherine said.

Lionel grinned and leaned closer over the table. “
But have you heard. Miss Howard, that the sixty-two-year-old Aldrich has a six-year-old daughter, Faustina, by his Mexican wife, the beautiful Theofila?”

Catherine
’s other eligible caller was Jeremy Rankin, a lieutenant of Company G of the California Volunteers, stationed at Camp Lowell. While not possessing Lionel’s extroverted personality, Jeremy was nonetheless a charming companion. Quiet, well-mannered, he treated her with a respect that bordered on the near reverence of a Southern gentleman. And he was, in addition, a rather attractive man of medium height with a handsome set of side-whiskers.

The two men naturally crossed paths as they came to call upon her, each giving only a curt nod of the head to acknowledge the other, though neither ever mentioned the existence of another call
er to her.

On Saturday mornings, Jeremy would call to escort her for a stroll. Since Tucson
’s streets were unpaved with no sidewalks, in order to avoid the strewn garbage, they would walk through the
Plaza de Las Armas
, sometimes buying a pie from John “Pie” Allen’s shop. North American adventurers from everywhere flooded the plaza, lured by stories of free land and mining bonanzas.

On one such Saturday, a chilly but sunny one in mid-December, she was walking with Jeremy and lamenting the fact that Tucson
’s citizens did not think their daughters needed an education. “Do you know, Jeremy, one father told me when he brought his son to my house that all a girl needed to know was how to cook and sew. Imagine!” she said with an indignant toss of her head. "How would I ever support myself if I had not received an education?”

Jeremy, who looked dashing in his blue uniform with the yellow stripe of the cavalry, took her hand in his. “
Miss Howard, you wouldn’t have to worry about supporting yourself. It would give me great—” The young lieutenant halted as he realized that she was not listening to his stirring address but was gazing with rapt attention just beyond his shoulder.

“
Catherine,” Sherrod called, “I was just on my way to see you!” He paused as he noticed the officer standing with her, and she made the introductions. The two men looked at each other in a stand-off.

“
Lieutenant Rankin was accompanying me to Sam’s store,” she contributed in the uneasy silence. “I needed a paper of pins. How is everyone at the Stronghold?”

“
We all miss you terribly. Brigham and Abigail are bored restless, and Lucy is at her wits’ end with no one to talk to. Father is even grumpier than before.”

“
And Law?” she could not help asking.

Consternation clouded Sherrod
’s deep-blue eyes. “Why, he’s in and out of the Stronghold, as always. The proverbial will-o’-the-wisp.”

Jeremy rested his hand on the hilt of his curved saber, and she knew he was annoyed at Sherrod for monopolizing her time. “
Give my affection to your family, Sherrod,” she said, reluctant to end the conversation but knowing to continue would have been impolite to Jeremy.

Sherrod tipped his planter
’s hat in farewell. “Lieutenant Rankin.”

Jeremy did not press his suit that day, and she realized she was glad. She was not certai
n she could have accepted, not after seeing Sherrod and being reminded of Law. Sherrod was every girl’s dream of a husband . . . as in the fairy tales, tall, dark, and handsome and with the wealth to match. But Law—what was it about him that captured her thoughts? He was so self- contained, so sure of himself with a quiet strength that seemed to belie his lackadaisical approach to life.

She was not surprised to find Sherrod calling on her the next morning when she opened her door. “
Catherine,” he said, catching her hands in his, “I can’t stand it with you here, so far away. I worry about you constantly. And then the sight of that officer—”

She touched her fingers to her lips. “
Sssh,” she said, stepping out of his reach. Outside the door a bewhiskered miner snored.

Sherrod flicked the old man an impatient grimace and sighed. “
All right, Catherine, but say you’ll come back with me for Christmas. It would mean so much to the children and Lucy.”

“
Dear Lord,” Catherine breathed, “is it Christmas already?” The importance of time no longer held any significance where everything came
manana
in Tucson’s lazily moving society.

She had even ceased wearing the small watch pinned to her dress. “
I can't, Sherrod. There’s the students.”