by Janet Dailey
When the containers were filled, she surrendered to an urge that was too strong to resist and scooped up a gourd-full of water and doused her dirty, smelly hair with it. She had some of the soapweed Gatita used when she washed her hair, and quickly lathered her own with it. The sensation was as close to heaven as she’d come in a long time. When she rinsed, Hannah was careful not to foul the water in the tanks, and used as little as possible.
Then she sat in a wedge of sunlight, her long, burnished hair spread across her arms to dry, brushed straight with grass bristles as Gatita did with hers. As yet she hadn’t acquired the knack of fashioning her hair in the double loops and securing it with the nahleen, a strip of leather shaped like a bow. Among her many other duties, Hannah was also being trained to do Gatita’s hair.
The thought made her laugh aloud. The sudden sound in the stillness instantly silenced Hannah. She drew her knees up to her chest, the rawhide soles of her moccasins making little scraping sounds on the bald rock.
She looked to the south, an inner compass telling her that in that direction home lay. Tears trickled slowly down her cheeks. The injuries of the flesh were almost all healed; there was no more pain. Yet she ached inside. She was aware of the distance, not merely in miles but in the vast change from that life to this one. That one had a dreamlike quality of unreality. It was another place, another time. And it was over.
The loneliness, desolation, and despair washed over her, and she cried. The tears she hadn’t shed during this whole ordeal flowed freely, while she wept for all the times she’d been afraid or in agony or humiliated or abused, for the rage that had no release.
When the emotional storm abated, she pressed at her eyes with a thumb and forefinger, pushing at the last few tears squeezing through her lashes. She breathed in deeply, sniffling at her runny nose, and lifted her head.
Slowly an idea took shape in, her mind. Instead of feeing sorry for her present state, she needed to change it. With the water bags filled, she’d have more than enough water. All she had to do was slip back to camp and take one of the horses. If she was lucky, she’d be miles away before anyone noticed she was gone.
When Hannah returned to camp, one of the older Apache women was tending the fire atop the baking pit. She didn’t even glance Hannah’s way when she walked past the camp to the tethered horses. Lutero’s spotted horse knew her and didn’t raise any fuss as she scrambled onto its back. She walked the horse quietly away from the others, her heart in her throat in anticipation of the cry of alarm that would give her escape away. But the silence held.
The minute they were out of sight, Hannah kicked the patch-colored horse into a gallop. The speed lulled her in the beginning, the miles falling away to accumulate and separate her from her Apache captors. When the pony slowed, she felt the first nudgings of panic. She was in unfamiliar country. The fort was somewhere to the south, but that covered a lot of territory—and she didn’t even know if this was the right direction.
This mountain-wrinkled, boulder-tumbled stretch of country was an obstacle course. Rare were the places where she could ride straight ahead for a prolonged time. Usually she could only angle in a given direction, following a zigzag course. In some places a lot of zigging had to be done before the zag was available.
Hannah reined in her horse, feeling the weight of hopelessness. It was foolish to think she could make the fort. If there were settlements, ranches, or mines in the vicinity, it would be purely chance for her to find one. Behind her was the misery, drudgery, and abuse of Apache enslavement, and ahead of her was a maze of canyons. She had no food, but plenty of water and a horse to carry her.
The narrow-chested pinto looked to the side, its ears pricking and a low whicker vibrating from its chest. Following its glance, Hannah saw the four mounted Apaches, motionless as statues, watching her from the spiny ridge of a low bluff not fifty yards away. She recognized Lutero almost at once.
Her first impulse was to dig her heels into the ribs of the spotted horse and make good her escape. It lunged forward under the first prod. Two strides later, she knew she hadn’t a chance of getting away from the Apaches. This was their country, Apacheria. There was no place she could hide from them, even if she were able to outrun them.
She hauled back on the rawhide strip of rein hooked around the pony’s lower jaw and roughly checked its flight. Turning it, she rode toward Lutero and the other Apache riders. The look in his eyes when she stopped the horse in front of him made her blood run cold. Since he’d brought her to the rancheria and given her to Gatita as a personal slave, Lutero had not forced himself on her. Now, his anger made her afraid of what he might do.
“I got lost.” She tried to Muff her way through it, speaking as always in border Spanish.
He snarled something in Apache and dropped a rope loop around her, snugging it tight, then wrapped more lengths around her, trussing her arms to her sides. Another Apache with a bad knife scar disfiguring his face rode close to take the braided rawhide rein and lead her pony. Lutero used the loose end of the rope to whip her several times across the arms and shoulders, the hard, sharp lashes numbing bands of her skin. Hannah could not hold in obvious than in Gathe low cries of pain that escaped each time he struck her.
The punishment was brief, almost a release of savage temper, but she could feel the welts raising on her skin. They moved out. Within minutes she saw the thin smoke from the baking pit, and the camp itself was in sight shortly afterward.
“I be here all time,” Lutero said, very much the predator playing with his captured prey.
“Como? What?” Hannah frowned.
“We”—a circling slice of his hands included the other riders—“guard. Watch and see if maybe you try run away.”
It had all been a trap, a test to see how much they could trust her. Hannah kept her gaze directed to the front and her chin level. It had all been so easy because they let it be. There never had been a single chance of escape, she could see that now. And it would be a long, long time before her every movement would not be watched by one of them.
The women were grouped near the pit fire, awaiting their arrival. Their high-cheeked and wide-nosed faces were expressionless, yet the black wells of their eyes held a glare that was directed at Hannah. Nowhere was the enmity more obvious than in Garita’s look.
A shove of Lutero’s moccasined foot pushed Hannah off the horse. With her arms bound to her sides, she couldn’t break her fall and landed heavily on the hard ground near Gatita’s feet, momentarily stunned by the impact. Lutero tossed the free end of the rope to the pregnant woman, a returning of property.
The first bite of the rope across the fresh welts lifted Hannah from the half-daze of her fall, the new pain screaming through her senses. As more blows from the rope rained on her body, she hunched into the ground, the harsh desert soil swallowing her moans while its smells and tastes filled her nostrils and coated her lips. The other women joined in the beating, poking and kicking until it seemed that all her ribs were broken and every breath was torture.
She was almost senseless when the blows stopped and hands grabbed her and roughly turned her onto her back. The rope was dragged from around her. There was a moment when she thought it was all over; then her arms were twisted to spread them away from her sides and the front of her buckskin blouse was ripped from its shoulder seam.
Hannah saw a red eye coming toward her, oddly stuck on the end of a stick held by one of Gatita’s older sisters. As it came closer, she caught a whiff of smoke and the smell of burning wood. The red eye was the red-orange center of a stick from the fire, surrounded by white-hot coals. Her shock turned to horror as Hannah realized they intended to use it on her. She pulled in her breath and tried to flatten herself into the ground, but the imprisoning hands held her fast.
She screamed as the fiery end seared through the layers of skin above her right breast. The acrid smell of burning flesh, her own, implanted its sickening odor in her mind. Again, and once again, it was pressed on
to her shoulder before she mercifully fainted.
Later Hannah learned that she had missed several opportunities to escape while the mescal was being gathered. Because she had waited until this important crop had been harvested and buried in the baking pit, her life had been spared. It was still possible that she would be a good slave because she had finished her work before she tried to run away.
Three deep burns made an irregular pattern above her breast. The pain of the charred flesh was excruciating; it throbbed through her body as she labored under the weight of the basket filled with baked mescal hearts. The basket was carried behind her, Apache-style, a cloth strap stretched around the basket and up across her forehead. The muscles in her neck ached with the strain of leaning against the heavy pull dragging her back, but this method distributed the weight over her entire body and made it easier to walk over the rough terrain.
As the season wore on, Hannah became conditioned to the harsh Apache way of life. More mescal gathers were made before the agave flowered, and the baked hearts were spread on the ground around the rancheria to dry in the sun. Hours were spent pounding them into thin sheets, keeping the Juices to make a preserving glaze. The dried mescal would keep almost indefinitely, making it a vital food source for the Apache. With hunger ever present, Hannah eventually grew to like its squashlike flavor.
Always there was work: food to be gathered and prepared, firewood to be hauled, water to be carried, and meals to be fixed. In addition to all the regular chores, there were animal hides and skins to be tanned and meat to be cooked and dried whenever the men returned from a hunt.
She was a slave, constantly at the beck and call of her mistress, physically punished if she was slow to obey and treated as an inferior. She hungered for the sound of a friendly word spoken to her, but she never heard it. She’d been given the name Coloradas for the red in her hair, but if she was addressed at all, it was usually in some abusive term.
As the days wore on, her previous life seemed more and more distant. On cold nights while she lay on the bare ground, huddling close to the fire because she had no blanket, she would recall the warmth of Stephen’s body when she used to curl against him in bed, and wonder if he was lying there now thinking of her. Sometimes she woke in the night, shivering, with his name on her lips.
Many Leaves passed and the season of Large Leaves came. The Apaches abandoned their camp on the mesa top and packed all their belongings on their horses, carrying what couldn’t be loaded on the animals, and set out. They moved frequently, Hannah learned, going where there was more game or where a wild food was ripe for gathering, like the juniper berries and the wild grains during the time of Large Leaves, Sometimes the spring or water tanks went dry. Sometimes Hannah didn’t even know the reason they were on the march again. Often they came in contact with other Apaches, sometimes camping together in an area where the food, game, and water were plentiful.
When a hunting party went out, Lutero was seldom among them, Hannah had observed; yet when Apaches from two or three groups gathered to form a raiding party, he was the one they addressed as jefe, leader. It was confusing, but she supposed it could be likened to a quartermaster and a field commander; one was good at tracking down supplies and the other excelled at fighting.
Several times Lutero left the group to raid, sometimes being gone for weeks on end. When he and his band returned, sometimes together, sometimes singly, it was always a cause for celebration—for the safe return of the men and the goods and horses they had stolen. Each time, the. heavy-breasted woman created her vulgar display with some man at the dancing. Cactus Pear Woman was a bi-zhahn, a young divorcee, and cousin to Gatita. Her behavior seemed to be acceptable because of that, although Hannah noticed that it was only exhibited on the occasion of a successful raid.
Fatigue was ever with her. Sometimes she worked by rote, too tired to think. At other times Hannah made herself recall things from that far-off past to keep them fresh, or made odd connections like the one with the quartermaster and field commander simply to keep that link with the past. She’d hum the melodies of songs that were favorites of hers or Stephen’s while she scraped the flesh from the hide of a freshly skinned deer, or recite’ the names of the officers of the Ninth and the companies to which they were attached while she picked up firewood. Hannah was determined not to let her memories of that other existence fade during this struggle to survive. Somehow she’d return to Stephen, and she wouldn’t allow that hope to die.
All hell had broken loose in the Apache country of Arizona and New Mexico. It began in April when factions of the Chiricahua tribe, which the late Cochise had once united, were again divided. A band under an Apache called Skinya was making raids into Old Mexico. With gold from one of their raids, a warrior bought whiskey from a station keeper along the Overland Stage route. He came back drunk and tried to buy more. A fight erupted; the station keeper and his cook were
The wild country around Fort Bayard was ceaselessly patrolled, from the mining district in the mountains around Silver City to the stage and supply routes in the desert to the south. Two detachments were constantly in the field to discourage raiding in the area. The patrols were staggered so that a third of the cavalry’s force’ always remained at Bayard.
It was hot, the ground throwing off the day’s accumulation of heat to add to the baking glare of the late afternoon sun. Cutter paused in the shade of the trader’s store, bending his head to light a black Mexican cigar and scanning the road beyond the main guardpost over his flickering match flame. Wade was due back with his detail any time now. His return would signal Cutter’s departure on his patrol.
The Apache scout Nah-tay appeared beside him, his approach soundless, “One comes to this person’s jacal with white captive for pindah with leaves on shoulder. He no here. You come. Talk to him.”
Cutter shook out the match and used the delay to ask, “Why doesn’t he come to the fort?” They conversed in border Spanish.
“One who comes afraid pindah become angry, not let him leave after they buy his white woman. You come,” Nah-tay repeated insistently.
“Lead the way.” He Indicated his agreement with a nod of his head, then followed a step behind the silent-walking Apache. At the main guardpost, Cutter stopped and informed the soldier on duty of his whereabouts. “I’ll be at the scouts’ encampment if anyone wants me. If Major Wade returns, have him meet me there.”
“Yes, suh.” The order was acknowledged with a stiff salute, which Cutter idly returned before continuing on with the scout.
Since Wade had issued his promise of a ransom for his wife’s safe return, several attempts had been made to collect it. Cutter knew the chances were remote this time as well, so he allowed himself no expectations.
At Nah-tay’s jacal, Cutter ducked inside the traditionally east-facing doorway and stepped into the sour-smelling interior. The unmoving air was hot and stale in the shadowed gloom. Two figures squatted on the beds made from blankets and robes. Cutter sank to his haunches opposite the pair while Nah-tay sat almost in the middle, serving as the link between them. Abiding by Apache etiquette, Cutter preserved the silence, meeting the stares with the natural gravity of his features.
When a satisfactory interval had passed, one of the Apaches spoke in his quick, loose-sounding native tongue, which Nah-tay translated into Spanish. “He says you are not pindah who asks for captive.”
“Tell-him that I am not. Tell him also that I bargain for the pindah who seeks the white woman with fire in her hair.”
The reply was relayed, and its subsequent answer. “He asks how much you pay.”
“It was promised that fifty dollars in gold would be paid.” Cutter repeated the reward that had been offered by Major Wade.
One Apache, an older, round-faced man, did all the talking and haggling, while the other sat silently and looked disagreeable. The fifty dollars was finally accepted as the price as long as the smooth-faced pindah gave his assurance that they would be allowed to leave.
After Nah-tay had told them that, the older Apache replied. “He says they left her tied in the brush. You are welcome to go see the woman.”
“Ask if he thinks I look like a tonto, a fool? Tell him to bring the woman here,” Cutter replied.
It was agreed that the Apaches would bring the woman captive into the camp. They slipped out of the jacal. A few seconds later, Cutter and Nah-tay vacated the hot, rancid hut to wait for them under the ramada outside. From the main road came the scuff of a horse column, the creak of leather, and rolling snorts. The patrol had returned.
A movement on the edge of the encampment directed Cutter’s attention back to the matter at hand. The two Apaches pushed a cowering, blanket-wrapped figure into the clearing. The hooding blanket and the woman’s downcast head made it impossible for Cutter to see anything of her face. She had the cowed look of a broken-spirited animal. Cutter eyed her with a growing resistance.
When she stopped in front of him and the old Apache pulled the blanket from her head, he was relieved to see that it wasn’t Hannah. The sallow complexion identified her as a Mexican even though her black hair had been dyed with red juice, probably made from boiling the bark of the mountain mahogany. She whimpered like a beaten puppy, too frightened and too ashamed to look at him.
From behind him came the stumbling clatter of tired horses being hurried over the desert rock. Cutter turned to observe Major Wade’s approach, seeing his uniform caked with sweat and alkal dust and the weariness of two weeks in the saddle about him. A black armband encircled his left sleeve. He wore it constantly as a reminder of his wife’s abduction, refusing to regard it as a symbol of mourning. The dramatic affectation had been picked up by the local newspaper, and fresh stories were circulated about the noble cavalry officer.