Under Apache Skies

by Madeline Baker

  It was quite a surprising story, really, coming from a group of people she had once believed were savages.

  She wondered what her mother would think if she could see her now. No doubt Nettie would be shocked to see her daughter kneeling in the dirt scraping bits of meat from the hide of a deer. Dani grinned. Sometimes she was shocked to find herself in the midst of an Apache encampment, surrounded by people she had once considered to be savages. But they were not savages. True, they lived in a primitive fashion, but they were an honorable people, kind and loving to their own, willing to share whatever they had with those in need. They laughed when they were happy and cried when they were sad. Husbands and wives had disagreements. Little boys played pranks. Little girls teased each other. Day by day, she felt more at home among the Apache.

  Still, there were times when she woke in the night wondering where she was. But then Sanza would reach for her, his strong arms curling around her, his voice, husky with sleep, murmuring in her ear, and she knew she was where she belonged. It was Sanza who made every hardship worthwhile. As long as he was there beside her, she wasn’t afraid of anything.

  Sitting back on her heels, she glanced around the camp. Sights that had once seemed strange now seemed natural to her. Now, in the heat of the day, men and children wore only enough for modesty’s sake. Once, the sight of so many near-naked men had shocked her, but no longer.

  Across the way, a mother nursed her infant. Several old men sat in the shade, dozing. A handful of young boys were shooting arrows at a target while the fathers wagered on which boy would hit the target the most times. She saw a young girl learning how to make moccasins, watched a baby take its first steps.

  Watching the people interacting with their loved ones, Dani felt a sudden overwhelming urge to go home, to be with her mother and her sister, to introduce them to Sanza. They would have to make the trip soon, she thought, for there would be little traveling once winter arrived.

  As soon as Sanza returned from hunting, she would ask him to take her home.

  Chapter Thirty

  Nettie stared from Ridge to her daughter and back again. “You want to get married? The two of you? To each other?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ridge replied. He smiled at Marty. “And we’d like your blessing.”

  Nettie placed her hand over her heart. “Oh, my.”

  “Just so you know, we’re getting married whether you approve or not,” Marty said. “It was Ridge’s idea to ask for your blessing, not mine.”

  Nettie flinched at the bitterness in her daughter’s voice. “Martha, are you ever going to forgive me?”

  “Why should I?”

  “There are things you don’t know.”

  Marty shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anymore. You weren’t here when I needed you. I don’t need you now.”

  “I think you need to sit down and have a long talk,” Ridge said. “Just the two of you.”

  “I don’t think so,” Marty said.

  “Well, I do. I’ll see you later.”

  “Ridge, wait.”

  “You need to get this settled.” He looked from one woman to the other. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

  Marty watched him walk out the front door. Sitting back on the sofa, she folded her arms over her chest and slowly turned to face her mother. “So what do I need to know?”

  Nettie took a deep breath. Now that the time had come, she didn’t know how to begin. She didn’t want to destroy Martha Jean’s memory of her father. Yet Seamus was gone and it was time Martha Jean knew the truth.

  “I was very young when I married your father,” she said quietly. “I met him at a party, and he was so handsome and so charming. All the girls were crazy for him, but he never paid attention to any of them. Just me. I was flattered. You know how he was, bigger than life. I think I fell in love with him that first night. It didn’t matter that he was older, or that, as the weeks went by, he got terribly jealous if I so much as looked at another man. Once he’d decided I was his, he wouldn’t allow me to dance with any of the other boys, not even the ones I’d grown up with.

  “I didn’t see anything wrong with that. In fact, it was rather endearing. He loved his whiskey, too. Again, I didn’t see anything wrong with that. My own father drank, and so did all the other men.

  “My parents warned me not to marry him. But I was young and in love, and the more they tried to talk me out of marrying Seamus, the more determined I was to be his wife. I told them that if they wouldn’t give me their permission, I’d run away. Against their better judgment, they relented, and we set the date.

  “My parents gave us the biggest wedding the town had ever seen. Everyone came. I was so happy. He had told me so much about the ranch, I couldn’t wait to see it, even though it meant leaving everyone I knew, everything I was familiar with.

  “It was on our way to the ranch that I got the first taste of his temper. We had stopped in a little town to spend the night. While I stayed in our room to bathe and do my hair, Seamus went to a saloon. We went out to dinner when he returned. As we were leaving the hotel, a man smiled at me. Seamus accused him of flirting with me, and when the other man denied it, Seamus hit him.

  “I was horrified. A crowd gathered around, and then the sheriff came and hauled Seamus and the other man off to jail.

  “Your father apologized over and over again the next day, swearing it would never happen again. But it did. Often. His accusations grew worse as time went on. He accused me of leading men on, of wanting to have an…an affaire d’amour.”

  Nettie laughed softly. “I know now all those accusations were born out of his own guilt. He was the one having midnight trysts. I was devastated when I found out. Of course, he promised me it would never happen again. But it did, so many times I lost count. One night we had a huge fight and he stormed out of the house. I thought he’d gone to be with his latest paramour.

  “I went outside so you and Danielle wouldn’t hear me crying. We had a young man working for us at the time—Danny Arnold. He was a few years younger than I, a sweet boy. He heard me crying and he tried to comfort me. I let him hold me. It was all perfectly innocent, at first.

  “I started looking for Danny whenever I knew Seamus was in town visiting his mistress. At first, all we did was talk. Danny told me about how he was saving money to go back home and marry his childhood sweetheart. A few months later, he received a letter saying that his intended had tired of waiting and married someone else. Soon after that, Seamus and I had a terrible argument. That night, while Danny and I were comforting each other, he kissed me.”

  Nettie looked away, her cheeks flushed with the memory. “What happened between us never should have happened. I’m not making excuses for what I did. It was wrong, and I knew it. But I was lonely and unhappy and so was he, and…” She shrugged. “One thing led to another. Seamus found us in each other’s arms. He wouldn’t listen to my explanation, wouldn’t listen to anything. He beat that poor boy and then he fired him and turned on me. He slapped me and called me every horrible name he could think of. He accused me of sleeping with every man on the ranch, and then he told me to get out, that he never wanted to see me again.

  “I looked at him and I knew I didn’t love him anymore, that I couldn’t stay in the house another minute. I was tired of his lying and his drinking and his irrational jealousy. I told him I was leaving and that I was taking my girls with me.

  “He laughed at that. He said I was the one who was leaving, and that if I didn’t go, he would tell you and Danielle that I was a whore, that I had had affairs with every man on the ranch, and that Victor Claunch was my lover.”

  “Victor!” Marty exclaimed. “I saw the two of you in the kitchen one night, kissing. I told Pa.”

  “I know. If you had been older, I would have tried to explain it all to you, but you were too young to understand such things. And I was so ashamed of what I’d done. I knew you idolized your father, and I was afraid that after what you had seen, you would believe Seam
us and hate me, so I ran away. I know now it was a horrible, cowardly thing to do. But after seeing what Seamus did to Danny, I was suddenly afraid of what he might do to me if I stayed. I intended to send for you when I got back East, thinking that by then he would have cooled off and realized that my girls belonged with me. I couldn’t go home to my parents. They had been against my marriage, and I simply couldn’t face them, or ask them for help. It took me a while to find a place to stay and a way to earn a living. When I was finally settled, I wrote to Seamus, but he wouldn’t answer my letters. It didn’t take long to figure out that he was intercepting my mail to you and Danielle.

  “I thought many times of coming back here to see you, but I could never summon the nerve. And the longer I put it off, the more difficult it became.” Nettie shook her head. “So many wasted years. I missed out on so much.” She wiped her eyes. “Can you ever forgive me? Can you ever understand?”

  Marty blew out a deep breath. She couldn’t condone what her mother had done, but she could understand her reasons for doing it. Ridge had been right, she thought. Seamus had left Nettie the ranch in hopes that it would bring Nettie home and somehow heal the breach between them. And it had worked.

  Rising, Marty went to her mother. “I understand.”

  Nettie rose. “And can you forgive me?”

  With a nod, Marty drew her mother into her arms, her eyes filling with tears, tears that washed all the anger and resentment from her heart and soul. “Welcome home, Mama.”

  Ridge glanced over his shoulder at the sound of the front door opening. Martha stepped onto the porch. She stood there a moment, looking right and left. Then seeing him standing near the corral, she hurried down the stairs.

  “So,” he said, stubbing out his cigarette with his boot heel, “how’d it go?”

  With a sigh, she moved into his arms. “I’m not mad at her anymore.”

  “Want to tell me about it?” he asked, and listened intently as she related what Nettie had told her.

  “I guess I can’t blame her for running away,” Marty said. “But I wish she’d had the nerve to stay. I can’t believe Pa would have ever hurt her.”

  “What would you have done in her place?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You wouldn’t have run away.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know you.” He smiled down at her. “Your courage is one of the things I love about you.”

  “What courage?”

  He laughed softly. “The same courage that wouldn’t let you stay home when I went after Dani. The same courage that made you hide your own feelings and shed your tears out in the barn where no one could see you when your old man was killed.”

  “Humph! You saw me.”

  “And I loved you for it.”

  She pressed her cheek against his chest. “And I love you.”

  “So when are we getting married? It had better be soon if you expect to be a maiden on our wedding night.”

  Cheeks flushed, Marty looked up at him. “We’re still in mourning for my father. We really should wait at least a year.”

  “A year!” He swore under his breath. “Is that what you want?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, if it were up to me, we’d get married tomorrow morning.”

  “That might be a little too soon. Anyway, it will take at least a couple of weeks to find a dress and send invitations. And I’d really like for Dani to be here, you know, to be my maid of honor.”

  “Well, if they expect to get here and back before winter sets in, they’ll have to leave right quick.”

  “Back? You don’t think Dani means to live with the Apache, do you?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure Sanza isn’t planning to stay here.”

  Marty bit down on her lower lip. Until this moment, it hadn’t occurred to her that Dani might actually live with the Indians. She had assumed that when Dani came back to the ranch, it would be to stay.

  Suddenly, observing proper etiquette and proper periods of mourning no longer seemed important. She had waited her whole life for the man holding her in his arms, and she wasn’t going to wait any longer.

  “I’ll talk to Nettie tonight,” she said, “and we’ll start making plans for the wedding.”

  “You’re not going to turn this into a three-ring circus, are you?”

  “No. But a girl gets married only once. I want it to be wonderful.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. “All right,” he said, brushing his lips over the top of her head. “Just name the day, and I’ll be there. But I’m warning you, it had better be soon.”

  His fingertips lightly grazed her cheek. His arm tightened around her waist, drawing her up against him, fitting her body close to his.

  A ragged sigh escaped her lips as her breasts were flattened against his chest. Tiny flames of desire seemed to spring to life everywhere his body touched hers and she lifted her face, eager for his kiss, reveling in the touch of his hands as they roamed up and down her back. Her breasts felt full, heavy, aching for his touch. She moaned softly when he broke the kiss.

  Ridge gazed deep into her eyes. “How long did you say we have to wait?” he asked, his voice husky.

  “I don’t want to wait, but what about Dani?”

  “Forget Dani,” he growled, and claimed her lips once more.

  She was breathless when he released her. “I’ll talk to Mama tonight.”

  Marty was sitting on the front porch a few days later, making a list of people to invite to the wedding, when Dani and Sanza rode into the yard.

  With a happy cry, Marty leaped to her feet and ran down the porch steps. “Dani!”

  Dismounting, Dani hurled herself into her sister’s arms. They hugged for several moments, then held each other at arm’s length.

  “You’re glowing,” Dani exclaimed as she studied her sister’s face. “What’s happened to you to put that sparkle in your eyes?”

  Marty glanced at Sanza, then back at Dani. “The same thing that happened to you.”

  “You got married?”

  “Not yet.”

  Dani blinked at her sister. “Who’s the lucky man?” she asked, and then her eyes widened. “Not Longtree?”

  Marty nodded, then burst out laughing at the look of utter astonishment on her sister’s face.

  “And you were upset because I married an Apache,” Dani said, grinning.

  Marty glanced over Dani’s shoulder to Sanza. Still mounted, he watched the sisters intently. “Do you still feel the same about him?”

  “More than ever,” Dani said, her eyes shining. “I have to admit, living in a wickiup isn’t easy, but somehow it doesn’t matter, not when he’s with me.” She looked up at the house. “Where’s Mama?”

  “She was baking bread last time I looked.”

  “Look after Sanza, will you?” Dani asked. She gave Marty a squeeze, then hurried into the house.

  Marty looked up at her brother-in-law. “Welcome to our home,” she said.

  He nodded, reminding Marty that the Apache rarely said thank-you.

  “Come on,” she said, and taking up the reins to Dani’s horse, she started toward the barn.

  Sanza’s gaze darted right and left as he followed the woman. He had never been among the White Eyes before. He had seen their lodges, but only from a distance. His people had forged an uneasy peace with the White Eyes. Of course, that didn’t mean the Apache didn’t occasionally steal horses or cattle from the whites; after all, the White Eyes had chased away most of the deer and buffalo. It seemed only fair that they should replace the game that had once roamed the land in abundance.

  He dismounted when they reached the barn.

  “Here.” She handed him a brush.

  He turned it over in his hand; then, following her lead, he began to brush the dirt from his horse’s coat. He checked the mare’s feet for stones, then led the horse into the stall she indicated. He rubbed the horse’s neck, speaking to
the animal in soft Apache for a few moments before stepping out of the stall and closing the door behind him.

  “Can we talk for a minute?” the woman asked.

  Sanza nodded.

  “Do you intend to take my sister back to your people?”

  He nodded again.

  “Would you consider staying here? At the ranch?”

  He frowned. “Why would I do that?” He glanced around, noting the big house, the well-stocked corrals.

  “This is Dani’s home.”

  He had not considered that. Among the Apache, when a man married, he said good-bye forever to his own family. From that time forward, he was obligated to protect and provide for his wife and her family. Why had he not thought of that sooner? Why had he not considered the consequences of marrying a white woman? By Apache law, he was bound to live with his wife’s family. And Dani’s family lived here.

  “Yes,” he said heavily. “We will stay here.”

  A smile spread over his sister-in-law’s face. “That’s wonderful!” she exclaimed. “Come on; let’s go tell Dani and Nettie.”

  “Who is Net-tie?”

  “Our mother.”

  Sanza shook his head. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He should have known she would not understand. She was not Apache. She did not know Apache ways. “Among my people, a man does not look at, or speak to, his mother-in-law.”

  Marty stared at him. “That’s… Why not?”

  He shrugged. “It is our way.”

  “So you never speak to your mother-in-law? Ever?” She frowned, thinking that was going to make for some interesting family holidays.

  “We will build our wickiup over there, facing west.”

  “There’s no need for that,” Marty said. “There’s plenty of room for you and Dani in the house.” Of course, living in the same house would make it practically impossible for Sanza to avoid Nettie. Heavens, what would they do if Ridge practiced that peculiar custom?