by Janet Dailey
“Yes.” Cimmy was slow to rearrange her skirts over her legs.
“We’re gonna get outta here, you an’ me, an’ make us some real money offa these miners. Soon, baby. Real soon,” he promised, and moved away quickly as his name was called again. The rattle of dry brush marked his passage. A moment later, she heard him speak. “You lookin’ fo’ me, Corp’ral?”
“Where the hell have you been, Bitterman? I was about t’figure yore scalp was hanging from some ‘pache’s belt.” Then the voices faded as they moved away and Cimmy didn’t hear Bitterman’s reply. She dawdled a little longer, her body still tingling from its thorough satisfaction, before going back.
The Silver City Gazette ran a sensationalized account of Lutero’s capture and imprisonment at the fort, never stating that he’d come to reclaim his white squaw, but covertly raising the question. After two days of more looks and whispers, Hannah came to realize that it didn’t matter whether there was any truth in it; it was what people wanted to believe.
An orderly was lounging in a chair by the door to the post commander’s office when Hannah entered. The tipped-back chair thumped down onto all four legs as he came smartly to attention. But she saw the way he looked at her and knew that the speculation had spread to the colored ranks.
“I’d like to see Colonel Bettendorf, please.” Dust particles danced in the sunlit air by the window, where the morning heat invaded the shadowed interior.
“Yes, ma’am.” For a second longer he eyed her with curious interest, then disappeared into the next room. She heard the low murmur of voices from within and the returning footsteps as the orderly reappeared. “The colonel will see you, ma’am.” He stepped aside to admit her.
The mutton-chop-whiskered commander stood behind his desk, stern and imposing in front of the map of territorial New Mexico. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Wade?” He was stiff with her.
“I would like your permission to ride one of the calvary mounts.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t allow any pleasure rides to leave this fort. You understand that it’s for your own safety.”
“I am aware of the restriction, Colonel,” Hannah conceded. “I would be content to confine my riding to within the boundaries of the fort. It is the exercise I seek, not the change of scenery.”
“Be that as it may . . .” He faltered slightly. “These are rough horses. We don’t have any mounts suitable for a lady to ride.”
“Excuse me, sir, but Sergeant Hooker pointed out a blue roan with a gentle disposition. I’m sure the horse would be quite satisfactory.” She didn’t bother to remind him that she had ridden rougher horses when she lived with the Apaches—without the benefit of a saddle and curb bit. “Perhaps you could have your orderly accompany me to the stables. If not, I am capable of catching and saddling my own horse.”
Decidedly displeased, he gave in to her request. “Henry!” he summoned, and his orderly came into the room. “Go with Mrs. Wade and saddle a horse for her to ride. She knows which one.”
“Yes, suh.” He saluted, then paused. “Suh, Cap’n Cutter’s outside.” The mention of his name brought an immediate tensing of Hannah’s nerves, a lifting of her guard.
“Show him in.” The colonel hitched up his pantlegs to sit down as Hannah left his office. In the outer room, she saw Cutter perched on a desk corner, his long body loose and lanky. The keen blue of his eyes met her glance and held it. She sensed the remembrance of their last meeting turning over in his mind and felt the heated disturbance that the recollection caused. She recognized the danger of such feelings.
“Captain.” She nodded smoothly to him.
“Mrs. Wade.” The acknowledgment was returned with a touch of his hat.
“The colonel said fo’ you to go in, Cap’n.” The orderly relayed the message as Hannah walked past Cutter.
“Thanks.” Cutter pushed off the desk, his gaze following her out the door. There was a heaviness in his chest at the deep reserve she’d shown him. It weighed on him as he went into the adjoining office.
“Good morning, Captain.” Bettendorf looked up from the sheaf of reports and returned the salute Cutter gave him. “I’ve just been advised that C Company will rendezvous with seven other companies of the Ninth along with Agent Clum from the San Carlos reservation and his Apache police on the twenty-first of April. Geronimo and his renegades have been operating out of Ojo Caliente, and the plan is to arrest them and remove them to San Carlos. That’s likely to be a major task for your men. I can’t imagine Geronimo surrendering peaceably.”
“Neither can I, but I won’t be there.” Cutter reached inside his shirt and removed his letter of resignation. “I’m resigning my commission as of the end of March.”
The announcement accompanied by the formal notice stunned the commander. “But we need good officers like you, Cutter.”
“But you don’t need me, Colonel.” Cutter smiled ironically as he automatically rebuttoned the yoked closing of his shirt. “I’ve had it in my mind a long time to get myself some land and run horses and cattle on it. There’s a valley northeast of here with good graze and water. I’ve saved up some money, and that’s where I’m hound.”
“You’re making a mistake. The army’s in your Wood.”
“No, it isn’t.” He slowly shook his head. “After the war, I stayed in out of stubbornness—because somebody wanted me to quit for the wrong reasons,” Cutter said, recalling the southern-bred girl whose face had long ago faded into a blur in his memory. “I’m tired of a lot of things, Colonel, but mostly I’m tired of the hate—and what it does to people. I guess when I was young I thought I could change it. Now I know better. It’s time for me to get out.”
“Well, if that’s the way you feel. . .” Bettendorf didn’t understand any of what he’d said.
“That’s the way I feel.”
Outside the building, Cutter stopped under the thatched ramada and raked a match-head across a rough post to light his cigar. Hannah was riding a white-legged roan around the parade ground. For a long time, he stood and watched her put the horse through its paces. Hungry impulses stirred inside him. The thought was in his mind to tell her of his decision to resign. He took half a dozen steps in her direction before he realized that it changed nothing for them. Instead, he turned away.
When she saw him turn away, Hannah pulled the roan up and absently patted its arched neck. Cutter had the loose, rolling walk of a man accustomed to the saddle, his long arms swinging freely at his sides. Tall and lean, he wasn’t a handsome man, yet he drew her interest almost magnetically. She sat astride the horse, her legs hidden in the voluminous folds of the split skirt she’d made, aware that Cutter at least wouldn’t disapprove of the costume. His easygoing ways and steady patience always gave her a kind of reassurance. But there was nothing about him that explained the restless pitch of her feelings and the yearning that tugged so wistfully at her heart. It was much too easy to recall, the pressure of his arms around her, that release of a temper and a will too long held in check that had broken through his kiss to move her. Cutter had a man’s needs and a man’s hunger—and a man’s inability to resist temptation. It undoubtedly had been a long time since he was with a woman, and she had tempted him, no more than that. Hannah touched her heels to the roan, urging it forward.
Stephen’s uniform was stiff with dried sweat and caked with layers of dust from five days of scouting patrol. The guard on duty outside the barred door of the adobe-block guardhouse came smartly to attention and held a rigid salute until Stephen returned it. He tapped the four-day-old newspaper against his leg as he glared through the iron grate at the Apache prisoner.
This murdering savage had defiled his wife, ruined his name, and tainted his career with scandal. Everyone in the whole territory and beyond knew of his shame and his failure to avenge the wrong. The stories would never stop as long as, this Apache lived. He swatted the rolled newspaper against his leg with increasing force, the thwacking sound eventually penetrating his conscio
usness even though the stinging slap of it did not. Stephen ceased the motion and eyed the guard.
“Why hasn’t the territorial marshal arrived to take this prisoner away? We are not operating a prison here.” He wanted the Indian out of his sight, removed to some distant point where his presence would not be a constant reminder of the degradation to which Hannah had submitted.
“I don’t know, suh,” the guard answered uneasily.
“Has he had any visitors?” Stephen again directed his gaze at the shadowy figure squatting on his heels against the back wall of the cell, leaning his shoulders against it, as silent and as motionless as a coiled rattlesnake, but without the warning rattles.
“A few’s come by t’look at him, suh—the ladies mos’ly.”
“My wife?”
“Yes, suh.” The tap-tapping of Stephen’s newspaper started again. “She been here.”
“If he makes any attempt to escape, Private, you shoot—and you shoot to kill. I don’t want his kind loose among our women again.” Stephen warned.
“He jes’ sit there, suh. We bring him his food, he don’t move, an’ don’t say nothin’.”
“Just remember your orders.” Stephen wheeled away, driven by the raw anger that pulsed through him.
When he found himself turning onto Suds Row, he stopped for an instant, breathing in the lye-strong air. He knew of only two releases for the wild energy he felt: violence or passionate sex. The latter could be found here. He set out again, ignoring the ragtag children who stopped their play to stare at the white officer in their midst.
At the canvas dwelling where Cimmy Lou lived, he ducked through the opening, and felt the rush of blood in his system. All of his urges were intensified by the sight of the full-breasted woman stacking bundles of neatly folded laundry. She barely paused in her work, her profile a black cameo for him to admire.
“What’re you doin’ here, Majuh Wade?”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you, Cimmy.” He crossed the tamped-earth floor to the table where she was separating the laundry into piles.
“It’s Miz Hooker to you.”
“That isn’t what you want.” He smiled with certainty.
“You don’t know what I want.” She whirled around to face him, her arms akimbo, and his glance was immediately drawn to the thin blouse stretching tautly across her breasts. “Then tell me what it is you want and I’ll get it for you.” He began unbuttoning the front of her blouse, undeterred by the slap of her hands in an attempt to stop him. “A new dress, a new gown, jewelry, a hat—just ask for it and it’s yours. I need you.” Stephen didn’t bother to unfasten the garment all the way, just enough to get his hands inside and feel those firm, round breasts. When she tried to pull away, he slid an arm around her waist. “I lie awake nights remembering what you used to do to me, and wanting it again.”
“Let me go.” She clawed at his hand. “You can’t buy me.”
“I did before—with all those gifts of Hannah’s old things.” Stephen denied her protest. “Now I’m offering you something new, something all your own.”
“No. I don’t want it.” She struggled wildly against his tightening arm, pushing and twisting to break free.
But Stephen laughed in his throat, aroused by the motion of her body writhing against him. “I like it when you fight me.” The roughness provided an outlet for the turbulent forces inside him. Gripping her under the jaw, he held her head still as he devoured her lips with a brutal hunger. “Meet me somewhere. Anywhere,” he breathed into her mouth as he felt some of the fight going out of her. “I’ll buy you anything.”
“I . . . don’t think I can. John T.—“ Cimmy turned her head. The sentence remained unfinished as her dark eyes widened with alarm, focusing on a point behind him. “John T.”
At the recognition in her voice, Stephen jerked his head around and found himself staring at the sergeant standing just inside the tent’s opening, a rigid figure with a rifle tightly gripped in his hand.
CHAPTER 20
“SERGEANT”— WADE TOOK A STEP TOWARD HIM.
“You better leave, suh.” John T.’s teeth were bared against the pain tearing apart his insides. He thought with odd clarity that now he knew how a mortally wounded animal felt before it went on a rampage. “You better leave, suh, before I kill you.”
After a split-second hesitation, Wade walked quickly past him and out of the tent. The moment he was gone, Cimmy Lou rushed to her husband. “It ain’t what yore thinkin’, John T.”
“I’m thinkin’ that all those things the major gave you, they weren’t for help in’ him, were they?” His eyes felt raw, like the rest of him. “I heard what he said. You bedded him.”
“It wasn’t like that. He—he forced me,” she insisted, and John T. turned away with a groan, fighting the desire to believe another lie.
“I’m a big enough fool, Cimmy Lou. Don’t make me a bigger one,” he begged. “I think I knew all along what you were doin’, but I didn’t want to see.”
“John T., you gotta listen t’me.” She came around him so that she could see his face. He felt again the pull of her beauty; it was so magnetic that he could hardly blame anyone else for being entranced by it.
“A white officer. How could you do it?” he demanded brokenly. “I’m top sergeant. I could walk with my head up and be proud of who I was. They respected me. I’ve got an education, I’m supposed to be smart. But look at the fool you’ve made of me. Don’t you care what people think, what they say about you? Haven’t you got any pride?”
“It won’t happen again, I swear it. I’ll make it up to you.” She pressed herself against his length, her hands moving over his neck and shoulders in supplicant caresses. He felt the insidious heat of her body enveloping him in its age-old message. “Everything will be all right. You’ll see.”
The rifle slipped from the loosening grasp of his fingers and fell against the side of his leg, then onto the earthen floor. The minor distraction was enough to make him realize what was happening. He gripped her arms and held her away from him.
“Did you love him?” John T. demanded.
“No.” She strained toward him, but his arms were rigidly locked to keep her at a distance.
“Then why? Why did you do it?” He shook her, angered that she could be with another man without even having feelings for him.
“Because he gave me things!” Cimmy regretted the truth the instant it came out. John T.’s rough push shoved her backward.
“You suck a man dry, then move on, don’t you? You got all you could get from me and the major. Who’s next? There’ll be somebody ‘cause that’s the kind you are.” John T. was trembling with the hurt raging inside him. “One of us needs to he put out of his misery. I just can’t figure out whether it should he you or me. As much as I’ve loved you, I swear that right now I could kill you, Cimmy,” he declared in an emotion-thick voice, and reeled out of the canvas dwelling, half-blinded by the tears he couldn’t cry.
She believed him. The panic of it raced through her nerves: she had lost control of him. She had to get away before he carried out his threat. Cimmy knew of only one person who could take her from this place. She ran from the tent shanty in search of Leroy Bitterman.
Out of breath and scared senseless, she finally found him scrubbing pots and pans in the company mess. She grabbed his arm and pulled him aside as she gulped in air. His wet, soapy hands gripped her sagging shoulders as she swayed against him.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” He sensed the panic in her.
“It’s John, T. He’s gone crazy,” she declared wildly. “He said he was gonna kill me. He will. I know it.”
“Is he after you?” Bitterman glanced toward the door as if expecting Hooker to come charging through it. “Where is he now? Do you know?”
Her head moved from side to side in a vague response. “I don’t know. The last time I saw him he was outside the trader’s store. I hid behind a building so he couldn’t see me. I
don’t know where he went.”
“Did he have a gun?”
“No. Yes, his pistol.” Her hands clutched his shirt-front, twisting into the material. “You said we’d go away. Let’s leave now.”
“In broad daylight? We can’t. Don’t fo’get I can be shot fo’ a deserter.” His cunning mind was working fast as he considered the alternatives. “Is he after me?”
“No.” She shook her bowed head. “He don’t know ‘bout you. It was the majuh. He was tryin’ to get me back when John T. walked in.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky an’ he’ll shoot hisself an officer,” he suggested in a wry attempt at humor.
“What’re we gonna do?” It was not his light remark that began to calm her; it was a sense of returning power. She was regaining control of the situation. She had drawn Bitterman into it, involved him to the point where the problem wasn’t hers, but his.
“First I’m gonna find out where he is and what he’s doin’. You wait here till I come back.” He pressed her backward against the rough adobe-brick wall and gestured for her to stay there.
The moment she was alone, Cimmy began plotting where she would have Bitterman take her and what she would do. The thought kept coming back to her that miners in Silver City were paying seven dollars for a clean shirt. She could wash a lot of shirts in a day’s time. It would really be something to be able to buy her own fancy dresses and not be beholden to any man for them. Instead, the men could buy her jewels. She held out her hands, visualizing the sparkling rings she would wear.
The door opened and Bitterman slipped inside. “I found him. He’s at the trader’s, sittin’ at a table with a bottle of whiskey an’ workin’ on gettin’ drunk. Like as not, he’ll pass out. That gives us time. You go home, pack all yore things, an’ meet me behind the stables right after the midnight call.”
“What if John T. comes home an’ catches me?”
Bitterman grinned, the action stretching out his thin mustache. “You can handle a drunk. Git goin’.” A slap on the rump sent Cimmy Lou on her way.