by Janet Dailey
The minute she lost control of the bay gelding, there was an immediate slackening of speed, as if the animal knew that the race was lost. The reins were in the hand of an Apache with blue lightning streaks on his high cheekbones, and he led the horse in a wide circle back over the same ground. The feeling of helpless, trapped terror was more difficult for Hannah to suppress now that her hands were empty—nothing to do and nothing to hold.
Until now, there had not been time to think, only to react; no time to wonder, only to run. As they rode up to the dry wash, Hannah saw two breechclouted Apaches on the ground by Lieutenant Delvecchio’s body, A sob was somewhere in her chest, but her teeth buried in her lower lip to keep from making a sound as she watched them strip the dead officer of his cartridge belt and revolver and go through his pockets for anything else of value.
In every movement of the Apaches there was a darting swiftness, an efficiency of action and speed. The instant the plundering of the body was finished, they swung onto their horses. Some silent consensus had them ride down the embankment to the dry creekbed, Hannah barely managing to cling to her side perch during the ramp-sliding descent of her horse. In a controlled haste, they were fleeing the scene.
Because the fort was too close—the pony soldiers too near—the reason cried out to Hannah. In anguished hope, she looked behind them, straining to hear the clank of bridle chains and the groaning of saddle leather, or to see the raised dust of a cavalry detail.
Then she faced forward and eyed the Apache leading her horse. It was the first good look she’d taken at any of her attackers, their painted faces seeming like glowering masks of evil in some theatrical play, complete with stringy black wigs. A thin layer of dust lay over the brown skin of her captor’s broad, powerful shoulders, a sinewy toughness to his naked torso. Something in his profile seemed vaguely familiar.
A horse neighed, distracting her attention. The cavalry mounts of both officers were in the possession of two Apache riders who were waiting at the bend of the sandy wash. Their presence brought the number of the band to seven, now coming together in a single force. A thickset Apache, his fat a solid bulk, sat astride a narrow-chested roan horse. Hannah recognized the horse and rider as the same pair that had been at the desert trading post. Captain Cutter had identified the Apache as a Chiricahua leader named Juh.
Startled by the discovery, she flashed a glance at her captor, remembering him, too—the Spanish-speaking one with the scar on his cheek. Hannah looked at the others and thought she recognized more from that bunch. It was difficult to tell, especially now that two of them had donned officers’ campaign hats and one had on a second lieutenant’s Jacket.
Her horse was led past the death-twisted body of Lieutenant Sloane, stripped of his jacket, weapons, and valuables, an arrow in his throat. Chilled and sickened, Hannah looked away. For the sake of her own sanity, she tried not to think about what they were going to do with her, but it was there—the fear—gnawing at her.
They rounded the bend of the wash, its red sandstone worn smooth by the desert’s flash floods. Hannah considered jumping out of the saddle. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, so she never thought for an instant that she had a chance to escape. But they might shoot her—death might come quickly. Yet if they wanted her alive . . . she shuddered at the unknown horror in the thought.
She mustn’t think about it. At this moment, they weren’t bothering her. There was still hope . . . there was still a chance that the soldiers from the fort might catch up with them, or that somehow she might get away. The key was to stay alive. Help would come. Stephen would come.
A hundred yards farther on they left the soft, hoofprint-hiding sands of the dry creekbed and headed into rough, broken canyon country. It was difficult riding, the horses always scrambling up some rocky slope or snaking down some twisting trail at a jarring trot, always at the quickened pace, strung out single file.
At the mouth of a barranca, they bunched up behind the leading riders as they stopped. A chubby-cheeked Apache boy of ten or eleven stepped out from the concealing brush of a palo verde. Within minutes, four more horses were driven out of the natural corral, all carrying local brands on their flanks. Apache booty from other raids was tied on two of the stolen animals.
No time was taken to rest. Hannah barely had a chance to relax her leg muscles from the constant strain of maintaining her balance in the side saddle. A pull of the reins lifted her horse’s nose, and it stretched out its neck in a brief resistance; then they were moving again.
The commotion outside the post headquarters began with the arrival of the galloper. Hearing the rushed and anxious tone of the relayed message without catching the words themselves, Stephen crossed to the door and stepped out into the shade of the galleried walk. A trooper put spurs to his lathered horse and kicked it toward the stables, obeying an order issued by the officer just turning to report to headquarters.
Stephen observed the small hesitation when Captain Jake Cutter noticed him at the top of the steps. Grim-visaged, Cutter threw him a perfunctory salute as he mounted the steps. Stephen returned the salute, his own restless nature sensitive to the turbulent currents in this windless desert air.
“What’s the trouble, Captain?”
“The patrol that went out to investigate the gunfire we heard earlier just sent a galloper back,” he said. “They found the bodies of Lieutenants Sloane and Delvecchio. The Apaches ambushed them about two miles from here.”
“Hannah?” The hard kick of emotion hit him in the stomach. “What about my wife? She went riding with them this morning.”
“I know, sir. They haven’t located her yet. I’m having a patrol mounted and I’ve ordered the Apache scouts to join us.”
“Apaches.” It was a white-hot thing vibrating in him, an anger and a fear. “We’ll find her, Captain,” Stephen stated with building force. “We’ll find her if we have to chase those red devils all the way to hell.”
“Yes, sir.”
A salute dismissed him. It was understood without needing to be said that Stephen would accompany the patrol, and he went to make his preparations.
The army was a fighting machine, but like all machinery, it needed time to get started, to get its men outfitted and mounted. Stephen chafed at the delay. Nearly fifteen minutes elapsed between the time the galloper rode in and the moment when the black troopers wheeled their horses into columns of four to ride out of the fort, a dozen haphazardly dressed agency Apaches in a straggly group leading the way.
By then word of the ambush had spread through the fort, bringing out other soldiers and dependents as well to watch the column leave. Mrs. Bettendorf and another senior officer’s wife were hurrying up the row to the rooms belonging to Lieutenant Sloane and his bride— his widow. It was the practice not to notify the next of kin until someone was with them in that moment of grief.
The two miles were covered at a gallop. When they arrived on the scene, the scouts fanned out to inspect the area, then came back to report. Raw with tension, Stephen sat erect in. the McClellan saddle, impatiently listening to a recap of information they already knew— where the ambush occurred, bodies found here and here, riding party jumped at this point, flanked by second group of raiders over here. Wade’s big, cedar-gold horse stamped at a fly, the saddle leather creaking at the shifting weight.
On his right,. Captain Jake Cutter was slouched over in his saddle, shoulders curved in a relaxed hunch. Stephen eyed him, aware again of that irritating ability of Cutter to grab every second of rest, sleep with a blink of the eyes, relax, with a looseness of the body. Stephen had the need for motion.
The head of the scouts was a buckskin-clad white man named Amos Hill, with a full-whiskered face and a scar from a knife wound that had blinded his left eye. The Apaches called him “One-Eye.” He wore the army’s yellow bandanna around his neck, but it was his only concession to uniform. He was hired to translate and to scout, and that’s all he did—no camp cooking or water carrying for him, He w
asn’t no step-and-fetch-it boy, he always said.
Instead of receiving the report from One-Eye Amos Hill, Captain Cutter was questioning one of the Apache scouts using a combination of stilted English and border Spanish. Nah-tay was squat in stature and powerfully built, with deep-set eyes that burned like living coals.
“Ask him if he knows who they were.” Stephen abruptly broke into the talk. “Mimbres? Chiricahuas?”
The question did not require translation. Nah-tay understood it. “Chiricahua.”
“How many? Where did they take the woman?” he demanded, conscious of Cutter tilting his head down, an act of withdrawal from the conversation.
“Seven. Eight. Maybe some wait out there.” A sweep of Nah-tay’s brown hand indicated the limitless canyons and rims of the desert. He added something in Spanish, which Stephen was obliged to ask Cutter to translate.
“He says the Apache goes where it will be hard for the army to follow.” Cutter studied the end of his cigar.
“What will they do with her?”
“Major—“ Cutter straightened in his saddle, his shoulder muscles flexing slightly in protest to this subject, while his gaze made a short sweep skyward.
“Tell him to answer me,” Stephen ordered harshly.
Cutter nodded to the scout. Nah-tay hesitated, then gave a long, staccato response in Spanish. Cutter did not look at Stephen as he offered an unemotional translation. “Nah-tay doesn’t know. He says it depends on many things. They may kill her slowly, or take her to Mexico and sell her to the slave markets. They may keep her for a captive ... or they may use her for their pleasure.. In that case, we will find . . . what’s left of
As Stephen started to rise in his stirrups, anger billowing in him at the ruthless savages, Nah-tay included, a hard hand gripped his forearm. Cutter gave him a narrow-eyed glance.
“You asked for it, Major,” he said softly.
With an effort, Stephen controlled his rage, lifting the reins. “As soon as the bodies are loaded in the wagon, send them back to the fort for burial.”
As the big, high-bred horse was wheeled away from the circle, its glistening rump swung against Cutter’s mount. Indifferently the second horse shifted out of the way. Cutter rolled his cigar to a far corner of his mouth, holding it between his teeth while he let his gaze follow Wade for a short span of seconds. Then he looked back to the flat-nosed scout.
“It is his woman the Apaches have taken,” he said in Spanish.
Nah-tay grunted and turned his deep-burning gaze after the officer. “Some ‘pache no be with woman on raids. Think they take his power.” He seemed to offer the possibility as a remote hope.
“How do these Apaches think?” Cutter asked.
“Quién saber The Apache shrugged.
“Who knows?” Cutter repeated under his breath, and laid the reins alongside of the horse’s neck, turning it away from the scouts as he half-saluted them.
He urged the heavy-headed horse into a lope and headed for the wagon that was hauling the dead back to the fort. His quick eyes scanned the ambush site, now a rest stop for his company of colored troopers. The Apaches had been after the officers’ horses and guns—• and some thumbing of their noses at the fort—but they’d taken the woman as an added prize. Gall burned his throat, the muscles tightening. He remembered her beauty, the shining of her hair, and the dance of her smile . . , and he remembered that hint of pride and strong will in her mouth. That spirit of hers would be hard to break. And it angered him that the Apaches would enjoy the time it would take.
He looked into the vast expanse that tumbled roughly around them, its dry heat waiting, its thorned and spiny plants bristling, and its scorched earth unforgiving. A hostile land.
CHAPTER 5
HOW FAR OR HOW LONG THEY’D TRAVELED, HANNAH didn’t know. She could no longer judge distance and time. Wherever the spotted rump of the pony in front of her went, the blood bay gelding she rode followed. It stumbled frequently, not as surefooted as the desert ponies on this rocky ground, which forced Hannah to be constantly alert.
The muscles in her legs and back were cramped from the sidesaddle position, and there was an aching soreness all through her from the long hours and the grueling miles on horseback. The midday sun, high overhead, added to her discomfort, sending its hot rays into the mountain canyons to bake the rocks.
The ruffed collar of her blouse was damp with perspiration, and the scratchy weight of her riding skirt and jacket seemed to smother her skin. She was so hot; the smell of her own body was strong. Wisp of hair lay wetly along the sides of her face and her hat sat slightly askew, but Hannah was too exhausted to expend the energy to right it. Besides, it seemed of little importance.
With no other means at hand, Hannah raised her arm and used the sleeve of her jacket to blot at the moisture beading on her upper lip. Her mouth and throat were parched, and the salty taste of her own sweat only increased her thirst. Not once had she seen any of her Apache captors take a drink since they had set out. She didn’t know how they kept going.
The mental stress, the physical discomfort both pressed on her. Her chin dipped and a wetness gathered in her eyes, Hannah shut them, and made her mind focus on anything that might help her. Someone had once told her that Indians admired courage and bravery; she mustn’t let them see she was afraid. Her head came up, her blurred vision slowly clearing, and her lips thinned out, dryly sticking together.
The stillness was broken by the clatter of many hooves on stone, the rattle of a miniature rockslide and the scrape of a hoof, and the gruntings of the horses as they picked their way along the side of a rocky hill. They followed it around to the base of its steep side. The rising bluff threw a wide band of dark shade onto the ground, and the raiders in the lead stopped to give the horses a rest.
After her first rush of gratitude had passed, Hannah experienced a twinge of unease. So far they had ignored her, but for how long? She watched the Chiricahua warrior ahead of her slide from his horse, always with that effortless, catlike grace and quickness. The reins to her horse remained in his grasp, but loosely, it seemed.
All the Apaches had dismounted, save the boy guarding the captured horses, and one moccasined Chiricahua scrambled back along their trail on foot, obviously a sentry. In the seconds it took her to notice these things, Hannah realized she might never have another chance to escape.
She kicked her horse and hit it with her hands to mate it pull free of the Apache’s hold. It was a slim chance, and a dangerous one. Even if the horse managed to get away, there was always the risk that it would trip on the dragging reins.
The tired and sweat-cated bay gelding made a startled lunge forward, whinnying its frightened confusion as Hannah beat at the animal, urging it to take flight. It tried to respond, but its head was pulled around by the heavy hand on the reins. The pressure never let up, twisting the gelding’s head around, doubling it back against its own body until the horse overbalanced. Hannah was thrown from the saddle, falling on the talus slide of the rock face. The shock of the impact stunned her.
Her horse scrambled to its feet and shook itself, like a dog shaking off water, while Hannah cautiously pushed herself up on her hands, dazed but cognizant that she had suffered no injuries beyond a bruising. A sound, a movement, a sense of something above her caused Hannah to turn over, scooting into a half-sitting position. The loose folds of her long riding skirt became tangled around her legs. Her Apache captor stood at her feet, his obsidian eyes staring at her out of the brutish face with one cheek scarred by a knife, his shaggy black hair hanging past his brown-skinned shoulders. The menace in him was silent.
Hannah remembered that he had spoken Spanish and said, in the border tongue, “The soldiers will come. They will catch you.”
The smallest flicker of surprise flitted across his wooden expression before it returned to its customary blankness. With a slight turn of his head, he translated her warning to the other members of his party in their own language. A few derisiv
e-sounding responses were offered.
“Yellow legs slow. Soldiers come. Apache no be here,” he answered her, harsh and arrogant. “Apache like grains of sand. Sprinkle on desert. No find.”
Her stomach knotted into a tight ball. For a second she looked away, trying to find some other straw of hope to grasp. There was a sudden motion and the-hat was plucked from her head, her hair painfully pulled until the securing pin was jerked loose. Hannah gasped aloud at the pain and lifted a hand to her hair, its chignon pulled loose. But she thought the better of arguing over Lutero’s right to her dark green hat.
To the chortling delight of his comrades, he set it squarely atop his black head. It was barely big enough in circumference to circle It, sitting a good inch higher than the clay-red sweatband around his head. But Lutero seemed satisfied with the fit and made a demanding gesture at Hannah.
“Coat,” he said, meaning the green riding jacket that matched the hat.
Once she realized he was serious, Hannah removed her riding gloves to unfasten the looped buttons of the jacket’s front. Sitting upright, she shrugged out of the fitted top and handed it to him. She felt immediately cooler without that layer of clothing, and she welcomed the relief on her heated skin.
The jacket was much too small to fit the powerfully built Apache with his broad shoulders and runner’s chest. The back seam split and the sleeves ripped as he tugged it on. Angrily he pulled it off and threw it on the ground. Hannah thought it foolish of him to believe it could fit him. She untangled her skirts to stand up and brush away the dirt and debris from her fall.