Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

would handicap them on the Outside, they functioned well here. Each child knew exactly what kind of life lay in store for him or her. There was comfort in that, I supposed, but was it enough to offset the abuses I’d seen?
    A ball rolled toward my feet and I stooped down to pick it up.
    “Is this yours?” I asked a little red-headed girl I’d seen at one of the dining room tables in Ermaline’s house. She liked grape jam with her biscuits, no butter.
    The girl nodded, but made no move to take the ball from my outstretched hand. The children she’d been playing with suddenly formed themselves into a defensive circle.
    I decided that since the mountain obviously wouldn’t come to Mohammad, Mohammad would have to go to the mountain. But when I approached the little girl, she stepped away, face apprehensive.
    “Don’t you want it?”
    She shook her head fiercely. Then she moved backward and hid herself inside her circle of friends, leaving me alone with the ball.
    Lena Jones, the Untouchable.

Chapter 15
    After making breakfast for Saul and Ruby the next morning (instant oatmeal and raisins, I’d given up on biscuits), I hiked down into the canyon, not stopping until I’d climbed out of the dogleg at the eastern end and onto the desert floor beyond. Soon the Purity graveyard came into view, at first appearing as haphazard rows of upright sticks bleached white by the sun. Only when you walked closer did the sticks arrange themselves into the form of crude crosses.
    Tony Lomahguahu hadn’t arrived yet, so I lowered my skirts, settled myself down on a rock, and enjoyed the scenery.
    Above, fat white cumulus clouds wallowed across the clear, hard sky. To the north, the Vermillion Cliffs loomed so close I could almost touch them, their scarlet walls plunging at a ninety-degree angle to the desert floor below. But there the beauty ended. On the flatland, a hundred miles of dirt, scrub and cactus stretched to the east, west and south, marooning Purity on a hostile beachhead. If the compound’s fathers had searched for a hundred years, they couldn’t have found a more isolated place.
    “Miss Jones?”
    He had approached from the opposite direction so quietly I hadn’t heard him.
    I stood and faced Tony Lomahguahu. He had probably been tall once, but age had bowed his back and the lined skin on his mahogany-colored face resembled a dry lake bed. His brown eyes remained alert. Like everyone I’d met in the past few days, he wore a plaid shirt and denims, but unlike the plain folks at Purity, he had spiffed up his outfit with a bola tie and several turquoise rings. He could have been anywhere from seventy to ninety, but he still cared about how he looked. I liked that in a man.
    “Yes, Mr. Lomahguahu. I’m Lena Jones.” I didn’t extend my hand. I knew little about Paiutes, but most Indians I’d met didn’t touch strangers.
    He nodded, and said in a softly accented voice, “Hope I can help you, Miss Jones, but I don’t know much about these folks. They don’t make friends with anybody who isn’t as white as they are.”
    I gave him a wry grin. “Yes, I’ve noticed. And they’re pretty white, aren’t they? But anything you could tell me would help. My client…”
    He raised a gnarled hand to stop me. “Jimmy told me about the little girl you’re trying to help, and he gave me this message. He said to tell you there’s trouble. Somehow that girl’s father found out where she was staying.” His face darkened. Apparently he didn’t think much of Abel Corbett.
    “That man, he told Child Protective Services the girl had been kidnapped by Indians. The family’s looking at jail time if they don’t turn her over to him.”
    I was aghast. “He can’t take her from Indian land!”
    “White people have taken things from Indians before, Miss Jones.”
    He was right, of course. Abel Corbett’s house at Purity sat on the Utah side of the state line, but if necessary for his legal standing with CPS, Abel could easily move across the road to the Arizona side of the border. All the trouble Jimmy and I had gone to had only gained her an extra week of safety. Maybe that week would be enough.
    “Did Jimmy’s relatives tell CPS what Corbett wants to do with Rebecca? Give her to some old man as a plural wife?”
    “CPS said they’d investigate, but they’ve got a case backlog and it’ll take awhile. They said to just be patient.”
    I wanted to scream in frustration. By the time CPS got around to doing