Apache Summer

by Heather Graham

  “Now, Miss. Stuart, those are frightful charges” — “They are true charges.”

  “But don’t you see, Miss. Stuart, you’d have to go into a court of law against this man. And you’d have to charge him in Wiltshire, and like you said …” His voice trailed away. “Why don’t you think of heading back east, Miss. Stuart?”

  She was up on her feet instantly.

  “Head back east? I have never been east, Colonel. I was born here in Texas.

  My grandparents helped found Wiltshire. And the little bit of town that yon Heusen doesn’t own yeti still do. I have no intention of turning it over to him! Colonel, there’s nothing else that I can tell you. I have had a rather trying few days. If there’s some place where I might rest, I’ll be most grateful to accept your hospitality for a night or two. Then, sir, I have to get home. I have a ranch and a paper that need my expertise.”

  The colonel was on his feet, too, and she sensed that, behind her, Jon and Slater had also risen. She spun around, feeling Slater’s eyes, certain that he was laughing at her again.

  But he wasn’t laughing. His eyes were upon her, smoky and gray and enigmatic. She sensed that she had finally gained a certain admiration from him. What good it could do her, she didn’t know. The colonel had been her last hope.

  Now the battle was hers, and hers alone.

  “Miss. Stuart, I’d like to help you if I could”

  “Nonsense, Colonel. You don’t believe a word I’m saying,” Tess told him sweetly.

  “That’s your prerogative, sir. I am very fatigued …”

  “Miss. Stuart can take the old Casey place while she’s here,” Jori said.

  “Doily Simmons is there now, with linens and towels.”

  “I shall be most grateful to the Caseys,” Tess said. “No need,” Slater drawled.

  “Casey is dead. Caught a Comanche arrow last year. His wife went on hack east.” He was taunting her, and she smiled despite it.

  “I have told you all, Lieutenant, I’ve never been east” — “Oh, not that east, Miss. Stuart. Mrs. Casey and the kids went to live in Houston, that’s all.”

  “Well, I rather like the area I live in,” she said sweetly, then she turned to the colonel.

  “If I may, sir … 7”

  “Of course, of course! Jamie, you and Jon will please escort the young lady to her quarters. And Mis~ Stuart, if it’s Wiltshire you’re insisting on reaching, I’ll arrange you an escort just as soon as possible.”

  “Thank you.”

  Jon opened the door. Tess sailed through it. Slater followed her.

  “It’s this way, Tess,” Jon told her. He’d never used her first name before, and certainly not as he did now, intimately, as if they were old friends.

  There was a bright light to his striking green eyes, and she realized that it was for the benefit of Jamie Slater. Jamie. Silently, she rolled the name on her tongue.

  “Lieutenant” seemed to fit him better.

  Not always . Not that day he had looked down at her on the rocks after shooting the snake. His hair had been ruffled, his shirt had fallen open, and she had wanted to touch him, to reach out and feel the vital movement of his flesh, so bronze beneath the setting sun. Then, then the name Jamie might have fit him just fight. It was an intimate name, ,a name for friends, or for lovers.

  He was behind her still. Jon Red Feather was pointing things out to her.

  “That’s a general store, and there’s our one and only alehouse, we don’t dare call it a saloon. And down there is the coffeehouse for the ladies. We’ve a number of women at the fort here. The colonel approves of the married men having their wives with them, and since the fort is strong and secure …” He shrugged.

  “Then, of course, we have the stores and the alehouse and the eoffcehouse, so we’ve a few young and unattached ladies, which makes it nice for the soldiers at the dances.”

  “Dances!”

  “Why, Miss. Stuart, we do try to be civilized out here in the wilderness.” “Desert,” Jamie Slater said from behind them.

  “I think it’s really more a desert than a wilderness, don’t you, Jon?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer, but continued, “There’s the Casey house right there.” He strode up three steps to a small house that seemed to share a supporting wall with the structure beside it.

  The door burst open suddenly. There was a large buxom woman standing there.

  She had an ageless quality about her, for her features were plump and clear, her eyes were dark and merry, and it was difficult to see if her hair was blond or silver.

  “You poor dear! You poor, poor dear! Caught up in that awful Indian attack”

  “Miss. Stuart doesn’t believe that it was Indians, Dolly,” Jamie Slater said evenly.

  Dolly waved a hand in the air.

  “Don’t matter who it was, does it? It was awful and heinous and cruel and this poor girl lost her friends and her uncle. It was your uncle, fight, dear?” “Yes,” Tess said softly.

  Dolly had a hand upon her shoulders, drawing her into the house. Jon and Jamie Slater would have followed except that Dolly inserted her grand frame between them and the doorway.

  “Jon, Jamie, get on with you now. I’li see to Miss. Stuart. I’m snre you were right decent to her on the trail, but she’s had a bad time of it and I’m going to see to it that she has some time to rest, and I’m going to give her a nice long bath, some homo-cooked food, and then I’m going to put her to bed for the night. She needs a little tenderness right now, and I’m not so sure you’re the pair to provide it!”

  “Right, Dolly,” Jon said. Amused, he stepped back. Jamie Slater tipped his hat to Tess over Dolly’s broad shoulder. His lip, too, was curled with a certain amusement, and Tess felt that, for once, she could too easily read the message behind his smok~-gray eyes. He thought that she needed tenderness just about as much as a porcupine did.

  “Good evening, Miss. Stuart. I do hope that you’ll be feeling better soon.”

  “If you’re lucky, Jamie Slater, she’ll be up and about for the dance tomorrow night.”

  “If I’m lucky” — Jamie started to murmur. “Well, hell, there’s no lack of young men around here, Lieutenant!” Dolly said.

  Tess could feel a brilliant crimson flush rising to her cheeks. She wasn’t sure who she wanted to bat the hardest—Dolly for so boldly putting her into an awkward situation, or Jamie Slater for behaving as if escorting her to a dance would be a hardship.

  “There’s absolutely no need for anyone to concern himself,” she said quietly, a note of steel to her voice. There-she’d given Slater his out.

  “I consider myself in mourning. A dance would he completely out of the question.”

  “Would it?” There was a core of steel to Jamie’s voice, too. He managed to step past Dolly and catch her shoulders, and she thought he was furious as he gazed into her eyes. She couldn’t understand him in the least.

  “I don’t think so, Tess. Your uncle was a frontiersman, a fighter. I don’t think he’d want you sitting around crying about what 53 can’t be changed.

  He’d know damned well that life out here was hard, and sometimes awfully darned short and sweet, and he’d want you to live. And that’s what you’re good at, isn’t it? Fighting—living?”

  “Lieutenant Slater, really, I” — “Maybe it’s just the fighting that you’re so good at. Maybe you don’t really know how to live at all.”

  She cast back her head, ignoring the grip of his fingers upon her shoulders.

  She gritted her teeth hard, then challenged him hotly.

  “And you think you’re the one who could teach me how to live, Lieutenant?

  Why, I’m not sure that you’re more than a perfo~t Yankee mannequin yourself, Lieutenant.”

  His lip curled. His grip on her shoulders suddenly relaxed.

  “Why don’t you test me then, Miss. Stuart?”

  “Jamie Slater, that young girl is vulnerable right now” — Dolly started
to warn him, but Jamie and Tess both spun on her.

  “As vulnerable as a sharp-toothed cougar,” Jamie supplied.

  “Never to the likes of him!” Tess promised. Dolly was silent. Soft laughter sounded, and Tess saw that it was Jon Red Feather laughing, and that he seemed quite pleased with the situation.

  “No wonder white men don’t like Indians!” Jamie muttered darkly.

  “Sure. Keep the white folks at war with themselves, and half the battle is solved,” Jon said pleasantly.

  “Jamie, come on. It’s settled. You can pick up Miss. Stuart right after sunset.”

  “Nothing is settled” — Tess began.

  “Sunset!” Jamie said. He seemed to growl the word. And he didn’t give her another second to protest, but slammed his way out the door. It closed with such a bang that even Dolly jumped, but then she smiled benignly.

  “I do just love that man!” Dolly said.

  Tess stared at her blankly.

  “Why?” she demanded. “Oh, you’ll see,” young lady. You’ll see. And that Jori! He does like to stir up trouble.

  But then, maybe it’s not trouble this time. Jon can be plain old silent as the grave when he wants, too. I think that he’s just delighted to put Miss. Eliza’s nose out of joint. She thinks she just about has her claws into Jamie, and who knows, it is lonely out here. But she isn’t right for him, she just isn’t fight at all. You’ll see.”

  “Miss. Simmons” — “Dolly. We’re not very formal out here.

  “Ceptin’ the men, when they’re busy playing soldier, that is.”

  “Dolly, I have no intention of going to a dance with Lieutenant Slater. I don’t really like him. He’s self-righteous and hard as steel and cold as ice” — “Hard maybe, cold, no. You’ll see,” Dolly predicted. “But” — “Come on, I’ve got a steaming bath over there in the corner . You just hop in, and I’ll make you some good strong tea, and pretty soon dinner will be ready, too. And you can tell me all about yourself and what happened, and I’ll tell you more about Lieutenant Slater.”

  “I don’t want to know anything more about Lieutenant Slater,” Tess said firmly. But it was a lie. She wanted to know more about him. She wanted to know everything about him.

  And she did want to go to the dance with him. She wanted to close her eyes and feel his arms around her, and if she thought about it, she wanted even more. She wanted to see him again as she had seen him that morning with his shirt hanging open and his hair tousled and his bare feet riding the rocks with confidence and invincibility.

  “Let me help you out of those dusty travel clothes,” Dolly said. She was quick and competent, and Tess felt immediately at home with her, able to accept her assistance. In seconds she was out of her dirt-coated clothing and into a wooden hip tub with a high back that allowed her to lean in 55 comfort. Dolly tossed her a bar of rose-scented soap and a sponge, and she blissfully squeezed the hot water over her knees and shoulders.

  “What did you do to your hands, young lady?” Dolly demanded.

  Tess looked ruefully at her callused palms.

  “Driving. I can do it, of course. It’s just Uncle Joe usually did most of the driving.”

  She didn’t know what it was about saying his name, but suddenly, tears welled in her eyes.

  “You should cry it out,” Dolly warned her.

  “You should just go right on ahead and cry it out.”

  Tess shook her head. She couldn’t start crying again. She started talking instead.

  “He raised me. My parents died when I was very young, both caught pneumonia one winter and they just didn’t pull through. Joe was Father’s brother.

  He sold Father’s land and put the money into trust for me, and he took me to live with him, and he made me love the land and reading and Texas and the newspaper business, and most of all, he made me love the truth. And he never gave up on the truth or on fighting. And that’s why I have to keep it up.

  He always gave me everything.”

  Her voice trailed away. So much, always. She remembered learning how to ride, and how to ink the printing press, and then how to think out a story, and what good journalism was, and. And what it was like to live through pain, and stand up tall despite it, and to learn to carry on. Joe had been there when she had fallen in love with Captain David Tyler back in ‘64, when his Confederate infantry corp had been assigned to Wiltshire. She had been just seventeen, and she’d never known what it was like to love a man in that mercurial way until she’d met David. They’d danced, they’d taken long walks and long rides and they’d had picnics out by the river, and he had kissed her, and she had learned what it was like to feel her soul catch fire.

  They’d known the war Dolly sniffed, apparently uninterested in a woman running a paper or a ranch.

  “There’s things a young lady should be doin’, and things she shouldn’t! Now you, you need to be married. You need yourself a man.”

  Tess sank back into the water wearily.

  “I need a hired gun, that’s what I need.”

  Dolly was quiet for a moment, then she said enthusiastically, “Well, then, you really do need Lieutenant Slater.”

  “What?”

  Dolly came around the side of the tub and perched on a stool.

  “Why, he was claimed to be an outlaw, him and his brothers! There was a big showdown, and the three of them shot themselves out of an awful situation.

  Then they surrendered, and all went to trial, and the jury claimed them innocent as babes!

  But those Slater boys—why, it was legendary!

  He’s as quick as a rattler with his Colt.” He was, Tess thought. She couldn’t forget the way he had killed the snake. She might have died, except that he was so fast with that gun.

  She shivered suddenly. Maybe he wasn’t what she needed. He was what she wanted. A man good with a gun. A man with hard eyes and a hard-muscled chest and hands that were strong and eyes that invaded the body and the soul.

  “Someone’s got to escort you to Wiltshire,” Dolly said flatly.

  “And Jamie, he’s got time coming. And he really ain’t no fool. I know there’s this big thing going on about whether it was Indians or white men attacked you, but Jamie, he’ll find out the truth.” “He didn’t believe a word I said.”

  “Oh, but he could discover the truth! He knows the Shoshone, the Comanche, the Cheyenne, the Kiowas and even the Apache better than most white men—most white men alive, that is! Why, he speaks all their languages! He can tell you in a split second which tribes are related to which, and he knows their practices, and how they live.

  Sometimes he even knows the Indians better than Jon Red Feather, ‘cause you see, Red Feather is a Blackfoot Sioux, and he thinks that the world begins and ends with the Sioux!

  If you’re telling the truth—oh, my dear! I didn’t mean that! I know you’re not telling fibs! But if you’re right about it being white men, why, Jamie will find that out. He won’t let the Comanche be blamed for some atrocity they didn’t commit!”

  Tess was silent. Dolly spoke again, softly.

  “If it isn’t Lieutenant Slater who takes you, it might be the colonel himself. His wife was killed by Pawnees before the war, and he ain’t ever forgiven any Indian since. Or else there’s Sergeant Givens, and he’s an Indian hater, too. Or Corporal Lorsby, and he’s a lad barely shaving, he won’t be too much good to you. Oh, wait just a minute, I’ve got some shampoo here, all the way from Boston.”

  “I don’t want to use your good” — “Come, come, what good does it do to this old head of mine? Use it!

  Your hair will smell just like spring rosebuds, and every bit as sweet as sunshine.”

  Tess accepted the shampoo. She disappeared beneath the water to soak her hair, then she scrubbed and rinsed it. As she rose from the water again, Dolly was still talking to her.

  “Lieutenant Lorsby, he’s a good boy. He’s just untried.

  He’s never been in a battle. He came from the east, and I’m sure he�
�s a bright and wonderful boy, but he don’t know a Kiowa from a Chinaman, and that’s a fact. You really need to think about this, you know.”

  Tess nodded, feeling a chill as the steamy water cooled. Maybe she did need Lieutenant Slater after all. She smiled at Dolly.

  “Could I have the towel, please?”

  Dolly held it, and Tess stepped from the bath, wrapped the towel around her and took a seat before the fire as she started to dry her hair.

  “All right, Dolly, so tell me, please, just what is it about this Miss. Eliza that’s so horrible.”

  “why, I’m not quite sure.

  “Ceptin’ she seems to think that she’s God’s gift to the men of the cavalry.

  Jamie’s the only one who’s never fawned over her, and I think that’s exactly why she’s set her cap for him! He ~ms to be amused most of the time, but the woman does have a wicked fine shape, and a wicked heart and mind to go along.

  You’ll see. Now sit back, and I’ll bring you your tea, and then some of the finest Irish stew you’ll ever taste. Then I’ll see to getting the rest of your things brought in. I have a nightgown for you, right over there on the bed. Once you’re all ~uched in, I’ll see to the rest. You need to get some sleep.” Dolly brought her tea, then the stew, and it was delicious.

  Tess hadn’t felt so warmed and cared for since. Since Joe had died.

  The thought brought her close to tears again, but she didn’t shed them. She finished eating and put on the nightgown Dolly had provided for her. She crawled into the bed, more exhausted than she had imagined. As Dolly started to leave the darkened room, Tess called her back.

  “Thank you, Dolly. Thank you, so very much.”

  “It’s nothing, child.”

  Tess sat up.

  “Dolly?”

  “yes?”

  “I didn’t take you from your family, did I?” She smiled.

  “Me? No, child. I sit around most of the day and remember Will. My husband. He was with the cavalry, killed just a few years ago. He made it home, though. Jamie Slater brought him home to me. He rode through an ambush to bring Will home. So now I mind the store a few hours a day, and I try to look after the soldiers that need a little mothering. And now you.