Woman of Three Worlds

by Jeanne Williams

  “Zach!” she called softly. “Here’s a place we can hide.”

  He didn’t seem to hear. “Zach!” she said more loudly. “Can you get down?” He stirred, blinked frowningly at her. “Get down,” she urged, giving him a careful tug.

  He got his other leg out of the stirrup and half fell, half climbed, down. Staggering under his weight, she maneuvered him inside, leaned him against the wall while she spread his blankets. Once he was stretched out and well covered, she unburdened the mule and led him to where the other waited.

  When her mount was unloaded she climbed on his bare back and led the other one back through the narrow gorge and down the canyon the way they had traveled. In the broad valley she slipped off, freed the mules of their bridles, and sent them off with slaps on the rump.

  They’d probably go back to the ranchería, but the “shoes” ought to muffle their tracks till they were far from their point of release. Though glad to be rid of their give-away presence, Brittany hated to see them go, for the journey would have been much easier with them.

  Afoot, she and Zach would have to stay in the gorge till he was strong again, which might be weeks. She chilled to realize that winter was truly Ghost Face, the poorest time for finding wild food. It would have been sensible to kill one of the mules for meat, but she couldn’t have done that till she and Zach were close to starving.

  More cheeringly she reflected that if they weren’t discovered before their supplies ran out, it would doubtless mean that the hunt had been dropped. It would be fairly safe then for Zach to shoot some game, or if he wasn’t able to, she’d have to try.

  What they couldn’t go without was water.

  Since sleep was the best medicine for Zach right now, she decided to search down the main canyon for a spring. About a mile from the gorge, she began to find stretches of gray stone smoothed and polished by sand and flood. Where a shallow basin lay beneath an overhang of rock, she saw whitish rings where water had been before it evaporated or was used up by thirsty wild creatures. Perhaps the basin only served as a natural cistern, but there might be a seep farther up.

  There was, and only a little beyond the basin, but it had been a dry year, with little rain or snow to feed the trickle from the rocks. A coyote or some other animal had dug out a hole in the sand so water could collect to drinking depth.

  Brittany improved on this with a sharp stick, washed her hands, cupped them beneath the seep, and drank. By the time she got back with the water jugs, the coyote well should have filtered enough water through the sand to fill them. She’d also look for water in the gorge, but at least this was in reasonable distance.

  Their most crucial problem solved, she hurried back to the cave, taking care to brush out any visible tracks with a stalk of dried desert broom.

  Her heart sank when she found Zach still feverish, though she could hardly have expected anything else. She got him to drink deep, fed him ground berries mixed with acorn meal and water, and held him close to her for a long while before she poured what remained of their water into a gourd and went out to refill the jugs.

  A brief search proved the gorge to have no water. She went to the seep as speedily as she could, filled both jugs, and was back at their refuge by noon.

  Weary from strain and the long ride, she drove herself to find enough grass to pad Zach’s bed. When she had stuffed this beneath his blanket, she placed her own beside him, curled close for comfort as much as warmth, and fell into slumber.

  XVIII

  She opened her eyes to thick duskiness, lay for a moment without knowing where she was. The moment Zach stirred she remembered everything and thought with a rush of relief, It’s almost night and they haven’t found us! Maybe they won’t.

  Leaning over Zach she touched his forehead. He still burned. She got him to drink. In the gray light she peered at his wound. Pus seeped from it. She thought it looked more puffy and swollen than it had for several days. A big mescal plant grew at the end of the ledge. She went out now and trimmed off a leaf.

  Taking the thick lower part, she pounded it to a mass with a rock and placed this astringent pulp on the angry wound. Zach flinched at the sting and started to drag the poultice off, but she spoke to him sharply and, with an incoherent murmur, he let it be.

  Dear God, let him get well. What awful irony it would be if they escaped pursuit, to have him die from the exertion!

  Even a small fire would have been a blessing against the cold and falling night, and she would have liked to simmer jerky to nourishing softness in the skillet Sara had packed, but she dared not risk the light.

  By feel more than sight, she arranged their supplies, heartened at the amount of food. Shredding jerky into water, she let it soak. She got Zach to take a fair amount of this cold soup, finished what was left and again lay down beside him.

  Helpless as he was, she couldn’t hold against him his insulting speculations about her virginity or his wish for the reward Erskine had offered. In spite of that, he was the man she loved. Lying close against him, if he hadn’t been so sick, she would have been almost happy.

  Next morning he seemed better, resting more quietly. Brittany made a small fire, brewed elderberry tea for him, and made stew. It was too soon to relax, but their trail must not have been picked up immediately.

  When the mules returned, some might think the whites had been killed. Only Sara knew the mules had been saddled and she wouldn’t be able to guess whether they’d been voluntarily released or if the fugitives had been waylaid by someone inept enough to lose the animals.

  It was a long day. Brittany got Zach to drink lots of tea and eat gruel and broth, but he was still in the grip of fever. He was restless and often mumbled incoherently. Once he called her name.

  “I’m here, Zach,” she said, bending over him.

  His eyes stared wildly at her. “Go to hell, Regina! I told you—” The words jumbled and he turned on his face.

  The outburst confirmed what Brittany had suspected, that there had been something between her cousin and this man. Perhaps there still was. Maybe, with Erskine’s reward, Zach would have more to offer the petulant beauty who was so obviously unhappy and bored with her husband. Brittany shrugged such imaginings aside.

  There’d be time to worry about such things when and if she and Zach got back to the post. For now, she must do all she could to make him well. As she saw how haggard he looked, how thin his splendid body had become, it was hard to believe that only a few days ago he’d held her in his arms, kissed her till she melted against him. Three or four more days would have made a big difference in his condition, but they’d had no choice but to go.

  She thought the wound looked better when she changed the poultice. Zach was tough and strong. Surely he’d soon regain the ground he’d lost through traveling too soon.

  The sky threatened rain or snow. Brittany ranged along the gorge, collecting wood. She stored a good supply at one end of the cave and shoved more under an overhang concealed from below by a thick growth of young oak and juniper.

  When the charred tree was pulled in front of the cave entrance, little wind could enter and it was fairly comfortable. It would have been cheering to keep a small fire, but Brittany was afraid to risk smoke or smell betraying them and extinguished the flames as soon as she’d cooked or made Zach’s brews.

  To pass the time she began to stitch new soles to an old set of moccasin uppers. Now that they were on foot, she and Zach would wear through a pair or more of soles on their way home. Fortunately Sara had equipped them with lengths of rawhide. Since the saddlebags were too heavy for all of them to be carried, Brittany decided to carve one of them into extra soles.

  When it rained that afternoon, her hopes of being undetected increased. Search parties might scout around for days, of course, and it wouldn’t do to grow careless, but the rain should blot out any faint tracks.

  If only Zach’s fever would pass!

  He spent a night so restless that Brittany couldn’t sleep either, part
ly because of his constant motions but more because of fear. Could the infection be worsening? When toward morning he quieted, she finally drifted off, and she woke only when the sun cast patterns through the dead tree’s branches.

  The water jugs were almost empty. Zach was cooler to the touch. Brittany dropped a light kiss where red-brown hair curled over his forehead and decided, since he was resting so peacefully, to fetch water before making his breakfast.

  Yesterday’s rain had raised the level of the coyote well slightly, and the air was washed with scents, dead leaves, freshened junipers, and bear grass, the cleanly pungent sand of the wash. Savoring it lifted Brittany’s spirits.

  After a distressing night Zach seemed better. He might even wake today and know her. She sighed at the prospect of trying to keep him confined to that small cave till he was really fit to travel. After this last setback she was going to be insistent. Much better to stay in their shelter till he was mended than expose themselves before they could travel swiftly.

  She was nearing the gorge when she froze at the sight of horsemen. Many of them, sweeping along the canyon! Her terror subsided a little when she saw they weren’t Indians. They wore a fantastic mixture of uniforms and civilian clothing topped with serapes.

  The leader, on a magnificent black horse with silver-trimmed trappings, wore tight-fitting leather trousers with silver buttons up the side and a matching short jacket. His sombrero glittered with a band of silver coins about the crown, and his sunburst rowels were silver too.

  He rode toward her, laughing, calling something to his men in Spanish.

  They thought she was Apache! Brittany held up her arms. “I’m American!” she called at the top of her voice. “American!”

  The leader was close enough for her to see his expression change from pleased anticipation to shock. Advancing more slowly, he motioned his men to halt. Reining in, he stared down at Brittany with golden eyes. He had a handsome, arrogant hawk face. Thin but shapely lips curved in a smile.

  “You are American, señorita?” To her shock, he spoke excellent English; the accent was more like that of eastern-educated officers she had met than that of the frontier. “Why, then, do you wear the garb of those accursed Apaches?”

  “I was carried away last summer from Camp Bowie in Arizona Territory.” Till she was more sure of their intentions she didn’t want to mention Zach. “I—I escaped a few nights ago.”

  Swinging lightly down, spurs sounding musically, the man swept off his hat and bowed. He had thick tawny hair. “Pardon my doubt, señorita, but it’s possible for a clever Apache to learn a few English words. I am Roque de Haro y Aguilar. Were you captive in that ranchería nestled in a broad canyon to the southwest?”

  Dread gripped Brittany. She looked past the leader, cried out as she really saw what some of the heavily armed men had tied to their lances or fastened to their belts.

  Scalps. Dozens of them. Most were long, but several were short, like a mourner’s or a child’s midway between hair-cutting ceremonies. A few were wispy tufts like the soft hair on little Sneezes’s head. And some were silver, like old Grouchy’s.

  Brittany’s knees crumpled. She would have fallen if the Mexican hadn’t caught her arm. Jody, Sara, Kah-Tay, Pretty Eyes, Grouchy, Fawn—all the others who had become people to her with their range of good, bad, and indifferent, like those at the post. Shuddering, she asked through numbed lips, “Did you—did you kill them all?”

  “All we found, though a few probably got away. That’s how we’ve happened on you, on a last look for fugitives. We rode in before dawn, fired the huts, and killed the vermin as they ran out. Surprised though they were, they killed twenty of my men.”

  “There was a tall woman, very handsome, who wore two crucifixes, and a very tall man with green eyes who had a little son. A very beautiful young girl, thirteen or fourteen years old—” And a baby in a cradle-board hung with charms, two novice boys, a gifted midwife, di-yin, who knew the songs and rites for all their kinds of power.

  Roque de Haro shrugged. “Who can tell one savage from another, except for women young and pretty enough to be enjoyed before their throats were cut? Ordinarily, we’d have kept the women and children for slaves, but after what happened at my silver camp, I meant to give these heathen a lesson.” He frowned at her. “For a captive learning of the death of her enemies, you don’t seem very grateful.”

  Brittany could no longer hold back her tears. Wrenching away from de Haro, she wept bitterly. “Some of them were my friends,” she choked at last. “I helped at the puberty ceremony of one of the girls your men may have ravished and killed! I saw one of the babies born!”

  De Haro grasped her shoulders and shook her. “Are you crazed, speaking as if those Apaches are human? Do you think there were no babies and young girls sealed to burn in that church in my camp?”

  There was no answer to that, no answer to the horrible things people of all races did to each other. When Brittany couldn’t stop crying, de Haro thrust scornfully, “If you doted on the Apaches, why did you run off?”

  Briefly, she explained about Zach. De Haro laughed. “So the Apaches you mourn were about to torture this man to death! Señorita, you will forgive my saying that you seem very confused.”

  She couldn’t argue that. “Perhaps you could sell us horses,” she said. “We have no money, but when we get to Camp Bowie, we would send the money through some merchant or trader.”

  De Haro shook his head. “Señorita, it would be my pleasure to give you horses, but I cannot have it on my conscience to leave you here with a wounded man. We have cleaned out one nest of Apaches, but there are others, and bandits too.” He smiled winningly and his tone softened. “I will escort you to my hacienda near Alamos and return you to your own country when a suitable merchant train is going to Tucson.”

  “I’m afraid Mr. Tyrell isn’t well enough to travel.”

  “Then we’ll carry him on a litter to a settlement two days’ south of here, one of my silver camps. The priest there has skills beyond the doctors of Alamos. I can assure you from personal experience. Father Martin healed me after Apaches lanced me a dozen times through the body and left me for dead.”

  The help of such a healer was tempting, but Brittany was reluctant to go deeper into Mexico, especially with the ravagers of the village that had been her home.

  “If you would just leave us horses, Señor de Haro—”

  “I cannot permit you to run such risks.”

  “Then let me stay at the silver camp till Mr. Tyrell mends. When he’s well, we can make our way back to the post.”

  De Haro didn’t answer directly. “Where is your Mr. Tyrell?”

  There was nothing for it but to show him. Half an hour later the party rode south, Zach on a litter carried by four men. Brittany watched Zach, not the flaunted scalps, and prayed that at least her “family” had escaped, especially Pretty Eyes, Sara, and Jody. When she thought of Sneezes and the other children, in spite of de Haro’s annoyance, she had to cry again.

  That night de Haro had a bough shelter rigged for her and another for Zach when she protested his lying out in the weather. “Do not be afraid, señorita,” said de Haro gallantly. “My men are all good Christians, even the Mayos. As for these peon conscripts who will turn east to Chihuahua tomorrow, I will sleep outside your shelter so none will dare molest you.”

  Though he had been the soul of Spanish courtesy, something in those strange golden eyes made Brittany more wary of him than the most villainous-looking of his scalp-carrying soldiers. When she started to feed Zach, whose fever had risen again after a day of jolting, de Haro frowned and said brusquely, “My servant, Mateo, can do that.”

  “No.” Brittany cradled Zach protectively as she looked up at de Haro. “Thank you, but I’ll look after Mr. Tyrell.”

  “You say he was hunting for you when the Apaches took him. You are not, by any chance, affianced?”

  A hot blush washed to the roots of Brittany’s hair, but she stea
dily returned the gaze of those troubling yellow eyes. “He saved my life when I first came to the post, but no, we are not engaged.”

  De Haro seemed to relax a trifle.” Well,” he shrugged, “if you tire of nursing him, Mateo is gentle as a woman. He learned that from shaving me. If I was nicked, he was flogged. Remarkable what deftness that training can produce.”

  Chuckling, he strolled off to talk with the lieutenant in command of the regular troops temporarily placed under de Haro by the governor of Chihuahua, who had evidently been delighted to reinforce a raid spearheaded by de Haro’s well-equipped private force.

  “My family has mines in all northwest Mexico,” he had explained to her. “Sinaloa, Chihuahua, and Sonora. My men escort the treasure caravans and retaliate when savages or bandits strike any of my holdings.”

  “But Mexico has soldiers!”

  His mouth slanted crookedly. “What can you expect of peasants dragged from their plows? The marvel is they fight at all. No, señorita, we of the frontier put no trust in government aid. Besides Apaches who occasionally strike even near Alamos, we must fend off the Yaquis and Mayos, who barely recover from one thrashing before they need another.”

  “But some of your men are Mayos,” she objected, remembering an earlier conversation.

  He frowned as if she were stupid. “When tamed, they make good workers. Dozens of Christian Mayos work on my hacienda and in my mines. When it is necessary, they fight against their bárbaro kin.” He added quickly, “But señorita, I give a wrong impression! You will think Alamos a city of barbarians. Indeed, many of its families are cultured and educated as well as able to defend their holdings.” He laughed as he explained what had been puzzling her. “I have three brothers. My father, a great experimenter, decided to educate us each in a different country so that, pooled, we have the benefit of Spain, Germany, France, and England. I went to Oxford.”