Only 03 - Only You

he takes everything I have to give and gives nothing in return but his own body?
    That was the danger, the risk, and the probable outcome. Part of Eve knew it with the cool logic of an orphan who had learned to survive whatever life threw her way.
    And part of Eve had always believed there was more to life than simple survival. Part of her believed in miracles such as laughter in the face of pain, the joy of a baby discovering raindrops, and a love great enough to overcome distrust.
    She’s a card cheat and a thief, and she set me up to die.
    Unhappily Eve finished her bath, dried herself, put on the shirt Reno had lent her, and walked back to camp.
    Reno’s eyes burned with hunger when he looked at her.
    “I left the soap there for you,” Eve said. “And the towel.”
    He nodded and walked past her. She watched until he disappeared into the slot before she went to the clothesline that had been rigged between two piñons.
    Eve turned Don Lyon’s black twill pants over on the clothesline. The white ruffled shirt wasn’t quite dry. She shook it out and draped it over the rope again. She turned Reno’s dark pants over as well, envying him the luxury of a change of clothing. Since her flour-sack dress had fallen apart, she had nothing but Don Lyon’s second-best gambling clothes to wear, for she had buried him in his best.
    There’s always the red dress.
    A grimace went over Eve’s face at the thought. She would never again wear that dress in front of Reno. She would rather go naked.
    Then she wondered if Reno was naked now, bathing as she had bathed in the rainbow pool. The thought was unsettling.
    Eve’s restless glance fell on the journals lying side by side on Reno’s bedroll. Eve grabbed them and sat cross-legged, tucking the long shirttails between her knees. Beyond the narrow slot that held the pool, the sun was still a hot, slanting presence across the late afternoon sky. The clear, pouring light made the journals easy to read.
    The spare prose of Caleb’s father said much about the centuries the Indians had spent under Spanish rule…
    Bones poking up through the desert pavement. Femur and part of a pelvis. Looks to be a child. Female. Scraps of leather nearby.
    Bent Finger says the bones belong to an Indian slave. Only the children could fit into the dog holes the Spaniards called mines.
    Spanish sign on the rock. Crosses and initials.
    Bent Finger says the scattered stones were once a vista, a kind of small mission. Tiny copper bell found with the child’s bones. It was cast, not hammered.
    Spanish didn’t call them slaves. Slavery was immoral. So they called it the Encomienda. The savages owed the Spanish for Christian teaching. Pay off in coin or pay off in labor.
    War was immoral, too. So the King had a Requerimiento, a requirement that had to be read before fighting commenced. It told the savages that anyone who fought God’s soldiers placed himself beyond the pale.
    Upshot of the Requerimiento was any Indian who fought the Spanish was declared a slave and sent to the mines. Since Spanish was gibberish to the Indians, they didn’t understand the warning.
    Not that it mattered. Indians would have fought anyway.
    Spanish priests ran the mines. Slave labor. Men lasted about two years. Women and children a lot less.
    Hell on Earth in the name of God.
    Coolness condensed along Eve’s spine as she thought of the ruins she had seen back up the valley. The descendants of the people who had built those many-storied dwellings weren’t dumb animals to be enslaved by other men.
    But they had been enslaved, and no war had been waged for the sake of their freedom. They had lived, endured brutal labor, died young, and been buried like rubbish in unmarked graves.
    Eve felt a kinship with the forgotten dead. More than once in the past few days, she and Reno had come close to dying alone and unnoticed, their graves no more than whatever piece of earth theyfell upon when they drew their last breath. The lesson of mortality was as old as man’s expulsion from Eden. Life was brief. Death was eternal.
    Eve wanted more from life than she had known so far. She wanted something she couldn’t name.
    Yet even without a name, Eve knew that it awaited her within Reno’s arms.

14
    W HEN Reno came back to camp, Eve was dressed in camisole, pantalets, and one of his dark shirts. She was also curled up on his bedroll, asleep. Slowly he took the journal from her relaxed fingers and set it aside. She stirred sleepily