Apache Flame
Madeline Baker
Ellora's Cave (2008)
* * *
Rating: ★★★★☆
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Historical, General, Native American & Aboriginal
Blush: This is a suggestive romance (love scenes are not graphic) Born to a father who was the town drunkard and an Apache mother, Mitch Garrett grew up among people who refused to accept him—all, that is, save for one skinny little girl, the preacher’s daughter, Alisha Faraday. As time passes, Mitch and Alisha’s friendship grows into something far stronger, until the town’s hatred drives Mitch away. But miles and years can’t change the feelings of his heart, feelings that he stubbornly refuses to acknowledge. Haunted by memories of what might have been, Mitch returns home to find that his love for Alisha and hers for him are as strong as ever, until a secret from the past threatens to destroy their future. Publisher Note: Previously published elsewhere under the same title.
About the Author
Madeline Baker started writing simply for the fun of it. Now she is the award-winning author of more than thirty historical romance books and one of the most popular writers of Native American romance. She lives in California, where she was born and raised.
An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication
www.ellorascave.com
Apache Flame
ISBN 9781419918094
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Apache Flame Copyright © 1999, 2008 Madeline Baker.
Cover art by Syneca.
Electronic book Publication August 2008
The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.
With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing Inc., 1056 Home Avenue, Akron, OH 44310-3502.
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
APACHE FLAME
Madeline Baker
She
She was with me
when I was fresh
smiling with one touch of
love
she was with me
as I moved through
the phase
of pain life holds for all
she
was with me
when I stabbed her heart
with words of
release
and goodbye
she moves with the light
as easily
as you breathe
she lives in the darkness
swallowing its pain
she
laughs at you
when you mock life’s love
devouring your words
as easily
as the wind pulls
a child’s hair
caressing her face
with giggles
she will carry my soul
when time tires of me
and I wither
like our fathers’
fathers
when you see
She
You have to smile
with one simple twinkle
her eyes
hold your soul
She was with me
and I was glad…
—M. Dearmond
Chapter One
Canyon Creek, New Mexico
1869
He was back.
Alisha Faraday heard the news at least a dozen times in as many minutes. It seemed everyone who saw Mitch Garrett ride into town that rainy Friday in late April felt duty-bound to stop by the schoolhouse and tell her the news. Her first instinct was to run away just as fast and as far as she could.
Hands shaking, she tried to concentrate on the test papers she had been grading, but it was no use. The words, whether neatly printed by Betsy Hazelwood or haphazardly scrawled by Bobby Moss, made no sense. How could she be expected to think about nouns and verbs and proper sentence structure when he was back?
Oh, Lord, what would her father say?
If only she could crawl under her desk and hide, from Mitch, from the prying eyes of the town, from herself.
She folded her hands on top of her desk to still their trembling. Funny, she had never known she was a coward, until now. She glanced around the schoolroom. Nothing had changed. The chalkboard was still covered with the multiplication tables she had written out for the class earlier. The empty desks stood in neat rows, like soldiers at attention. The books were neatly stacked on the shelves; the world globe was in its proper place. Heat rose from the big old black cast-iron stove in the corner. Her old winter coat and hat hung on a peg near the door, along with her umbrella.
Taking a deep breath, Alisha looked out the west window, staring at the rugged snow-capped mountains that loomed in the distance. She was worrying needlessly. Mitch had ridden out of her life five years ago. She had been little more than a child then, barely seventeen. No doubt he had forgotten all about her by now.
She hadn’t forgotten him, though. Not for a day, not for a minute.
And now he was back.
Putting her head down on her folded arms, she closed her eyes, and lifted the lid on the Pandora’s box of memories she had kept tightly closed for so long…
* * * * *
Alisha sat in her chair, eyes wide, while the schoolmaster meted out punishment to the boy who had stolen her lunch out of her pail. Mitch Garret, the town bad boy, stood in front of the class, his head high, one arm outstretched, while Mr. Fontaine struck his palm with a ruler. The usual punishment for breaking one of the school rules was ten whacks, but Mr. Fontaine hadn’t stopped at ten.
Mitch stared at the back wall, his face an impassive mask, his eyes dark and angry as Mr. Fontaine meted out an additional ten blows. Mitch hadn’t flinched, nor had he cried out. He just stood there, his body rigid, looking old beyond his years as he counted the blows out loud.
Tears stung her eyes and dripped down her cheeks as she imagined his pain and humiliation. She had told Mr. Fontaine she didn’t care that Mitch had taken her lunch, but Mr. Fontaine hadn’t paid any attention to her.
“The boy is no better than a common thief,” the schoolmaster had replied brusquely, “and he must be punished.”
Cringing in her seat, she listened as Mitch counted out the remaining blows. She thought Mr. Fontaine looked as though he was enjoying it far too much.
“Eighteen.”
Smack!
“Nineteen.”
Smack!
“Twenty.”
Smack!
“You will stand there and contemplate your sinful behavior until class is dismissed,” Mr. Fontaine said curtly.
And Mitch had stood there, his gaze still fixed on the back wall. She had the feeling he wasn’t really there at all, that his spirit had somehow slipped out of the classroom, leaving them all behind.
When school was dismissed an hour later, he trailed behind her
as she walked home.
Wondering if he meant to do her harm because of what had happened, she whirled around, her heart pounding. “Why are you following me?”
“I want to know why you were crying,” he said, his voice and expression sullen.
She looked up at him. He was eleven and tall for his age. A lock of unruly black hair fell across his forehead. His black cotton trousers were worn and faded. His shirt was tight across the shoulders; the sleeves were too short. She risked a glance at his hand and he shoved it into his pocket, but not before she saw that his palm was still red and swollen.
“Go ‘way,” she said. “I’m not supposed to talk to you.” Her mother and father had both warned her to have nothing to do with “that boy”. Her mother thought it was shocking that a bastard of mixed blood should be allowed to go to school with the children of the town’s leading citizens. Alisha didn’t know what the word “bastard” meant, but she had known it was something bad by the tone of her mother’s voice.
“Why did you cry for me?” Mitch demanded.
Alisha shrugged, embarrassed that he had seen her tears.
“Tell me!”
“I felt sorry for you,” she mumbled. “That’s all.”
“Well, don’t ever do it again. I don’t need no little girls crying for me.”
“I’m not a little girl,” she retorted, even though it was true. She was short and petite, like her mother, and very sensitive about the fact that people thought she was no more than six when she was actually eight and a half. “Why did you steal my lunch?”
He glared at her as if he hated her. “Cause I was hungry, that’s why.”
“You should have told me you forgot your lunch. I would have shared mine with you.”
He looked away, and she saw a flood of red climb up his neck. “I didn’t forget it,” he muttered, and before she could ask any more questions, he turned and ran away, splashing across the creek to where the town’s poor people lived.
He hadn’t come to school the next day, and then it was Saturday, and there was no school.
She had wandered through the house, looking for something to do. Mama was ironing her Sunday-go-to-meeting dress; Papa was working on his sermon. Usually, she loved to read, but that day her books and her games and her dolls held no interest, so she had left the house and walked down to the creek. She wasn’t supposed to go down by the creek alone, but she told herself it would be okay to go down there just this once. She wouldn’t go in the water; she would just sit on the edge of the creek and maybe put her feet in the water.
She walked along the bank until she came to the big flat rock that jutted out over the creek. Sitting down, she took off her shoes and stockings, then, her legs dangling over the edge of the rock, she swished her feet back and forth in the cool water.
“This is my spot.”
Her head jerked up and she saw Mitch Garret standing on the far side of the creek, his hands fisted on his lean hips. “Is not,” she retorted. “Besides, it’s on my side of the creek.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said imperiously. “Go away.”
“Make me.”
He glared at her a moment, then waded across the creek. Her heart began to pound wildly as he scrambled up the slippery bank. Every instinct she possessed urged her to run away as fast as she could, but before she could stand up, he was there, towering over her. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, just some funny-looking thing that tied around his waist. A long flap covered his privates. He was so skinny, she could count his ribs.
“Go away,” he said. “This is my place.”
“Why are you so mean?”
“Take after my old man, I guess.”
She looked up at him, then reached into her pocket and withdrew a shiny red apple. “Want a bite?”
“No,” he said, but she could almost see his mouth water.
“I’ll give you the whole thing if you let me stay.”
He regarded her for a moment, then shrugged. “Okay.” He took the apple from her hand and devoured it, core and all, in a few quick bites, making her wish she had brought two.
“Why weren’t you at school yesterday?” she asked.
He looked away, his expression guarded. “I was…I was sick.”
“Oh. Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
“Yeah.” He sat down beside her, his long legs dangling over the edge of the rock.
“What’s that thing you’re wearing?”
“It’s a breechclout.”
She frowned. “I’ve never seen anything like that. Where did you get it?”
“My ma made it.”
“Oh?” She would have asked more questions, but something in his voice warned her not to.
“Wanna go swimming?” he asked gruffly.
“I can’t. I don’t know how.”
“You can’t swim?” He looked astonished.
She shook her head.
“I could teach you, if you wanna learn.”
“Really?” She looked at the water, then shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“What’s the matter?” he asked, the challenge in his voice matched by the look in his dark blue eyes. “You scared?”
She was, but she wouldn’t have admitted it to him, not for anything.
He stood up and held out his hand. “Come on then.”
She didn’t want to, but couldn’t think of any way to refuse, and then, to her relief, she heard her mother calling.
“I’ve got to go,” she said. Scrambling to her feet, she grabbed her shoes and stockings and ran all the way home.
She started taking extra food and sweets in her lunch pail after that, sneaking them to Mitch when no one was looking. Even as a boy, he had been inordinately proud. He had hated her because she knew he was poor and hungry all the time, had hated accepting her charity, and yet he had been just a boy and all the pride in the world wouldn’t fill his empty belly.
She saw Mitch often that long, lazy summer. Her mama was in the family way and so sick that the doctor told papa she should stay in bed until the baby was born. Papa hired a girl from town to look after her and Mama and do the housekeeping chores, but Chloe didn’t care what Alisha did, so long as she didn’t cause any trouble. It offered Alisha a kind of freedom she had never had before.
She went to the creek every chance she got, drawn to Mitch without knowing why. She took him apples and fried chicken and when Chloe baked, she took him sugar cookies and bread fresh from the oven.
One sunny afternoon not long after their first meeting at the river, he taught her how to swim. Clad in her underwear, she followed him into the creek where the water ran deep and slow.
“You scared?” he asked, and she shook her head.
She wasn’t scared at all, not with Mitch there beside her, and before long, she was swimming. It was exciting, exhilarating, and she swam until she was exhausted and then they climbed out of the creek and flopped down on a patch of sun-warmed grass. She stared up at the cloudless sky, basking in the warmth of the sun.
“What does your daddy do?” she asked when she caught her breath.
“He doesn’t do anything,” Mitch replied sullenly.
“He must do something,” Alisha insisted. She had seen Mitch’s father in town from time to time. He was tall, handsome man with cold blue eyes. She had never seen him smile.
“He’s a gambler,” Mitch said.
Alisha’s eyes widened. “Really?” Her papa often preached against the evils of gambling, declaring that saloons were dens of iniquity.
Mitch looked at her, daring her to say something. She wisely changed the subject. “Tell me another story.”
She loved the stories he told her, stories his Apache mother told him about Coyote the Trickster and why the raven was black. “Please?”
He sighed. “Did I tell you the one about how death came into the world?”
Alisha shook her head. “No.”
“Well, a long time ago, people lived forever.
Nobody got sick, and nobody died. I don’t know why. Maybe nobody ever thought about it. But one day, when the earth started getting crowded, they knew had to make a decision about it. Coyote didn’t want death in the world. He thought it would be a bad thing. He said he was going to throw a stick in the river. If it sank, people would begin to die but if it floated, people would go on living forever. So he threw the stick into the water, and it floated.
“Then Raven decided he should have a say. He said he would throw a stone in the water. If the stone floated, there would be no death but if it sank, people would begin to die. So he threw the stone in the water, and it sank to the bottom. And that’s how death got started.”
Alisha clapped her hands. It was a foolish story, of course. Young as she was, she knew it wasn’t true. Papa had told her Adam and Eve had brought death into the world, and Papa wouldn’t lie. Mitch’s story was just a fairy tale, like the ones Mama told her at bedtime, but she loved Mitch’s stories, just as she loved the hours she spent with him.
In the days and weeks that followed, he taught her how to snare a rabbit and cook it on a spit over an open fire. Once, she asked him to teach her how to fish, but he had refused. When she asked why, he explained that Usen did not intend for snakes, frogs, or fish to be eaten. Likewise, the Apache did not eat pork or turkey. They shunned bear meat, believing that the spirits of evil people sometimes returned to earth in the bodies of bears. It was no wonder he was always hungry, she thought, when there were so many things he wouldn’t eat. And yet, to her horror, he told her he had eaten gophers and squirrels.
He taught her a few words of Apache. Gah meant rabbit, gidi meant cat, dloo was the word for bird, baya meant coyote. Ashoge was the word for thank you, ya a teh meant hello.
It was the best summer of her life, until her mother died and the baby with her. Papa told Alisha the news, then took her by the hand and led her into the dark bedroom so she could kiss Mama goodbye. Alisha stared at the body on the bed, with its pinched waxy gray face, then turned and ran out of the room.
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