by Janet Dailey
When the flame was burning strongly, Hannah passed him the food she’d set out and they ate, a weighty silence between them. Several times she felt his eyes on her as she chewed on the tough agency beef, but she never caught him looking at her. She guessed that he watched her covertly, as she did him.
The sky above the smoke hole in the thatched roof had a purple hue and the flickering pool of light cast by the small fire played across the bronze planes of Lutero’s face. His hair hung black and straight from the blue calico band around his head, the blunt ends brushing the fringed shoulder seams of his buckskin shirt. Hannah felt tautness running through her nerves and rejection growing in her stomach for the food she was putting there. She put aside the rest of her portion.
“You do not eat,” Lutero observed.
“My stomach is filled. I can eat no more.” She wiped her greasy hands on the sides of her tanned leather skirt.
“Enju. I cannot eat anymore.” The suggestion of a smile gentled his bluntly carved features, but Hannah didn’t acknowledge it. She was too stiff with a dread that had to be controlled. He waited, motionless by the fire, while she stored away the uneaten food; then he rolled to his feet in one lithe motion, swinging a blanket around his shoulders. “I will check the horses before we sleep. You will come.”
Her hesitation was slight; then she followed him through the opening as he held the skin flap aside for her. The deep purple of night had settled over the canyon, masking their surroundings in black shadows. Her footsteps were almost as noiseless as his as they walked to the small clearing to check the horses.
“The moon rises.” The tilt of his head directed Hannah’s gaze to the gleaming white crescent above the black horizon.
“It looks cold.”
“It is cold.” Lutero raised a blanket-draped arm and started to put it around her shoulders to bring her inside its warm protection. Hannah instinctively flinched at his touch, and he drew back. “Do you have fear of me?”
“No.” She could honestly say that she wasn’t afraid of him.
“Then come where it is warm.” The end of the blanket was again raised, while he waited with calm patience for her to join him inside its cloak. Steeling herself to impassivity, she moved within the open curve of the blanket and felt the outline of his hard, muscled body all down her side. She remained detached from the contact as she listened to the munch of the horses, barely discernible pale shapes against the darker shadows of the trees.
Absently, Hannah realized she was probably no different from many women who married to have a roof over their heads and food on their tables—and endured the touch of their husbands because there was nothing else they could do. For the first time, she saw the injustice of it. But it was ingrained from childhood that they needed men, that without them they were less than women. She found herself objecting to the subjugated role she had always played. It was a new thought and one to ponder.
“It grows late,” Lutero stated, his head turned toward her.
Hannah stirred, roused from her wonderings; yet she maintained her stoic indifference. She held her end of the blanket, ignoring the feel of his hand on her waist and the rub of his hip against hers as they walked back to the secluded jacal.
Inside the structure, the low-burning fire threw little light to ward off the encroaching shadows. Under the cover of the darkness, Lutero pulled the buckskin shirt over his head, and she caught the glistening sheen of his muscled chest. She turned her back to him and began undressing.
For one instant, just before she slipped beneath the blankets where Lutero lay, she let herself remember that other time when her body had been blistered and raw. She tried to school herself to feel nothing when his hands moved onto her. She sank her teeth into her lip to silence her automatic protest, relieved that Apaches regarded the practice of mouths touching as revolting. Hannah stared up at the twinkling of stars through the wispy trail of smoke rising through the roof’s hole, and disassociated herself from the things that were happening to her.
In a wholly abstract way, she was conscious that his hands were not rough with her but caressing. She was not rigid under his touch, but neither was she responsive. When he levered himself on top of her and moved between her legs, a hot rage seethed through her and she shifted under his pinning weight, resisting the jabbing probe of his male-head. He stopped, his hand gliding down to rub her mound and stimulate the flow of female juices until she was moist and ready for his entry. And Hannah discovered that the body was capable of accepting what the mind rejected. Even though she received no satisfaction and little pleasure, the coupling was not the objectionable act she had expected. There had obviously been a healing of the mind as well as of the body. Here was one more thing she could endure.
During the next five days, they spent nearly every minute together. Sometimes they worked at separate tasks doing camp chores, and other times they walked, but never venturing outside the confines of the box canyon. Lutero talked, mostly recounting details of successful raids when he’d outwitted the stupid pindahs or telling amusing stories about this or that person. Sometimes Hannah listened, but mostly she feigned attention, smiling and nodding at the appropriate times.
“Mañana, ugashé’ As always, their conversation was a mixture of Spanish and Apache as Lutero informed her that they would be leaving this place the following day. Hannah wasn’t sorry. While it would be crude and totally unfeeling to say she only tolerated him—there were moments when his company was actually pleasant—she longed for time to be by herself.
“It is time, I think.” She nodded, and glimpsed the flash of blue as a jay took flight from the tree just ahead.
“Do you wish for your own house?”
“No comprendo.” Hannah didn’t understand why he asked the question.
“Do you wish to live in house with first wife or do you wish to be separate?”
“Separate,” she was quick to answer.
“Anh, yes.” He smiled knowingly. “Two wives seldom happy under same roof—even sisters. Fight.”
“Anh.” After putting up and taking down so many wickiups as the band constantly moved to new sites to hunt and forage, it would be a novelty to erect her own when they returned to the rancheria.
“Look.” Excitement was in his voice as he pointed to something high on the canyon face.
Hannah scanned the sheer rock, but her eyes were not as keen as Lutero’s. “What is it that you see?”
“Bees make hive where think we cannot reach to steal their honey.” His confident expression indicated differently, but when Hannah spotted the dark comb, she wasn’t convinced. “You wait. I get.”
In disbelief, she watched him move to the base of the canyon wall where it rose almost perpendicular to the ground and begin his climb, finding hand and toe-holds in the smooth ledges of the layered rock where none appeared to exist. It was an exhibition of agility and strength, partly to impress her with his skill and daring, and partly to satisfy his boyish sweet tooth with honey.
Higher and higher he went. Hannah’s head was tipped back as far as it would go to keep him in sight. When he was almost within reach of it, Lutero stopped and snapped a dead branch off the twisted trunk of a tree. At any other time of year, the bees would have swarmed from the hive and attacked, but now, heavy with winter, they slept. Still, Hannah held her breath as he pried at the encrusted nest. Two large chunks of it broke off and careened off the canyon face, falling to the ground not far from her. Sluggish, disoriented bees crawled from the broken honeycombs, keeping Hannah at a distance while Lutero descended.
When he reached the ground, he scooped up the two chunks and shook out more bees, then urged Hannah to run before the bees woke up. Lutero followed, yipping cries of success. They were halfway back to the jacal before they stopped running.
Lutero gave her the larger piece, all sticky with oozing dark honey. She bit into the waxy comb, the thick, sweet honey running down the sides of her mouth and dripping from the comb, and she cu
pped her hand, trying to catch it. It was like nectar on her tongue, richly flavored and sweet.
She licked at her fingers to get every drop, making appreciative sounds in her throat. “Bueno. Muybueno.”
“Is good for you. Good for women,” Lutero informed her. “Honey make woman fertile, so her stomach will grow large with baby.”
Hannah knew that the Apaches had many superstitions centering on pregnancy, but she had not heard this one before. The honey lost some of its flavor. Not because she believed what Lutero said, but simply because she hadn’t considered that she might have his child. For so long, she had wanted Stephen to give her a baby. She felt a sharply bitter pang at the thought that eventually it might be Lutero’s she carried. She put a hand on her stomach, wondering if she had already conceived.
“We begin to make baby,” Lutero stated with certainty. “It takes many times to make all the parts. Eyanh.” He urged the honeycomb to her mouth, encouraging her to have more.
She bit into it and slowly chewed on the honey-coated wax, almost letting his superstitions sway her into believing. That was nonsense. But the chance of her becoming pregnant was very real.
The hour call traveled the circuit of the sentry posts around the fort’s perimeter. Stephen Wade listened to the lonely call running through the darkness from inside the Goodsons’ parlor. His stance by the wood stove resembled a parade rest, one arm cocked his back and his feet slightly braced apart. The glass of port in his hand took away some of the stiffness of his pose. His glance strayed to the window, as it had repeatedly during the last twenty minutes . . . ever since he saw the gleam of light shining from a window in his. own quarters across the way.
This morning, Captain Jake Cutter had taken a detail from A Company on patrol. The colored sergeant who accompanied him had been John T. Hooker. From that, it was easy to deduce that Cimmy Lou had come to see him, as she often did when her husband was away from Fort Bayard.
Damn, but that black wench excited him. He shied away from the erotic images that flashed through his mind. His damned cock would get hard if he didn’t stop thinking about her, Stephen tossed down the rest of his port. When he’d first glimpsed the tight, it had been too soon after the fine dinner the Goodsons had prepared for him to take his leave without breaching social etiquette. But now . . .
“After such a delicious meal and such excellent port”—Stephen lifted his glass to salute Captain Good-son’s taste—“I don’t know how to thank you for inviting me tonight.”
“It was our pleasure,” pretty blond Maude Goodson assured him.
“Have some more port, Major.” The captain reached for the wine bottle to refill his glass.
“No more for me, thank you.” Stephen set the glass on a doily-covered side table. “I am behind in my correspondence, so I hope you won’t think me rude if I tell you that I must retire to my own quarters.”
Protests were made, mostly by Maude, since Captain Goodson deemed it inadvisable to argue with his superior officer. Finally Stephen’s hat, coat, and gloves were fetched and he bid them good night.
When the door had shut behind him, Stephen stepped from beneath the ramada and paused to turn his collar up against the night’s winter chill. The sleepy eye of a quarter moon shone on the darkened parade ground. On the other side of the quadrangle, gleams of light came from the black silhouettes of the barracks, the source of the occasional sound of men’s voices drifting on the desert air.
It was a mean post, brutal duty. He’d served his time in these harsh, unsavory conditions. Now there was a chance that it would all change. God, how he wished Hannah was here. After all this time he’d finally been recommended for promotion, and he wanted to share the news with her. There was even a slim possibility he’d be transferred out of the regiment. Custer’s massacre last summer had decimated the ranks of the Seventh Cavalry, and the army was waging a full-scale war against the Sioux, whom Crook called the best light cavalry in the world. Stephen wanted to be part of that campaign against an enemy who could be engaged in battle, instead of fighting these hit-and-run guerrilla tactics of the Apache. It was all happening—slowly— but still it was happening. If only he could find Hannah.
Restlessness pushed at him, all the coiled, driving energies sending him striding across to his quarters where Cimmy Lou waited to ease them. He wondered how he could manage to take her along with him if he was transferred. Now, that would be ideal.
He didn’t regard it as unseemly to think of Hannah and Cimmy Lou at the same time. Gentlemen had always kept mistresses for their personal enjoyment. In Stephen’s mind, Cimmy Lou had no effect on his feelings for Hannah, not lessening his devotion in the slightest.
The minute Stephen entered his quarters he pulled off his hat and gloves, hardly breaking stride as he tossed them on a table and headed down the hall to where the faint light shone, shedding his coat as he went. He opened the door and walked in, then stopped cold.
“Why, Majuh Wade, it’s so good to see you at last,” Cimmy Lou declared in her best imitation of a lady, and sank in a low curtsy.
The metallic gold threads in the gown’s bodice glittered in the lamplight, the brown satin shimmering and rustling softly as she straightened. Outrage built within him at the sight of that gown—the one Hannah had worn to that last dinner party before the Apaches captured her—on that coffee-colored body.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing in that dress, you damned little slut?! Take it off!” He threw aside the army coat draped over his arm and advanced on the startled girl, too enraged to wait for her to obey. “Dammit, I said take it off!!”
Cimmy Lou took a step backward in alarm, but before she could stop him he grabbed the high bodice and ripped it down the front. Roughly manhandling her, he tore the dress off her, his force sending Cimmy Lou stumbling, wary and half-naked, to one side. Stephen picked up the shredded gown, belatedly noticing its destruction, and clutched it in his hands, desperately holding onto that piece of his wife.
He was slow to hear the scurrying sounds of Cimmy Lou pulling on her plain blue skirt and drab green blouse. The swift tread of her footsteps finally aroused him, and he turned to see her walking to the door, the usual provocative sway of her body stiffened by an angry pride.
“Where are you going?” He frowned in vague confusion.
“I’m leavin’.” She yanked open the door. “Come back here,” he ordered, his frown deepening.
She stopped to glare at him. “You don’t own me, Majuh. I comes here of my own free will an’ I ain’t comin’ no more.”
“Cimmy Lou, wait!” Stephen urged, crossing the room to the door. “I don’t want you to leave yet. Look, if it’s a new dress you want I’ll buy you one.”
“I don’t want nothin’ from you—not anymore.” She slammed out of the bedroom.
Instead of slipping out the back the way she always did, Cimmy Lou went out the front door. She hugged the blanket shawl tightly around her as she hurried across the parade ground at a trot and headed between the long barracks, taking the shortcut home. The deep shadow between the buildings enveloped her in its blackness, forcing her to slow down.
The sudden appearance of a figure directly in her path momentarily frightened her. Then she recognized the man and her heart started beating again, faster and heavier than before. “Leroy Bitterman, you shouldn’t pop out of the dark like that. I thought you was an Apache,” she muttered angrily, in no mood for him or any man.
“You left the majuh’s kinda early t’night, didn’t ya?”
“Early or late, it ain’t none of yore business.” When she tried to walk by him, he sidestepped to block her path again. “Let me by.”
“You been goin’ there purty regular when yore man’s away. I been watchin’ . . . and wonderin’ what it is you ‘do’ fo’ the majuh in the dark.”
“I thought you was watchin’,” Cimmy Lou retorted sarcastically, and tried to shoulder past him, but he caught her arms and pulled her against his long, lean
frame.
“Why don’t you do fo’ me what you been doin’ fo’ him?” His narrow face with its thin mustache moved close to hers.
“You let me go, Leroy Bitterman, else’n I’ll scream,” she warned through bared teeth.
“No, you won’t.” He ground his mouth onto her full lips, the pin-sharp whiskers on his upper lip stinging her skin.
Cimmy Lou twisted her head away from his grating kiss. He grabbed a handful of her hair and tugged harshly on the roots to force her back, but the smarting pain only made Cimmy Lou fight him all the harder, kicking at his legs and curling her fingers to claw at his face, incensed that he, too, thought she would stand for such rough treatment. He struck her, curing her on the jaw, then hitting her a second time with force.
She stopped fighting suddenly and shut her eyes, offering no resistance when he clamped her face between his hands. “Yore always playin’ with men, first one, then another, an’ ain’t a one of ’em full-blooded enough fo’ you or you’d be with him yet. I can show you what it is yore missin’—an’ it’ll be more than you ever dreamed it could be.” She remained silent and passive, motionless and indifferent to his claims, her eyes closed. “Look at me.” His hands tightened their viselike grip on her face, but she didn’t respond.
Again he kissed her roughly, driving his mouth against her lips, but they stayed slack under his pressure, neither taking nor giving. A groan came from his throat. “Kiss me,” he murmured hoarsely, and tried again, rocking his lips across hers.
The anger and frustration that riddled him pleased Cimmy Lou. She’d show him that she wasn’t to be mastered—not by him or anyone. A run of quiet satisfaction moved through her when the pressure on her lips ended and he leaned his forehead on hers, dropping his hands to her shoulders.
“There ain’t nothin’ there.” His breathing came in hard, laboring gusts, the sound of it heavy like the beat of his pulse. She opened her knowing eyes to study his face, and the lack of peace in it. “Not fo’ me. Not fo’ any man. Yore hollow inside. All there is, is them hips of yores.”