“You—you coward!”
“No, love. Arms are my profession. Should you make the mistake of telling your husband, I can kill him very easily in a way that’ll look like self-defense. I’d like to take off these boots, but, damn you, if you won’t hold still—”
She arched upward with frantic strength, sending him off balance, though one leg and arm still clamped her. Her fingers closed on a rock. She crashed it with all her might against his head and was astonished when, convulsing with a guttural cry, he suddenly collapsed. She hadn’t hoped the blow could be that disabling. Then she saw the figure above them, breechclout over trousers, high Apache moccasins rolled at the knee.
One hand held the war club that had crushed Frazier’s skull. Brains and blood oozed over her breast. Paralyzed, she waited for the blow that would kill her. But the tall Apache dropped his club, kicked Frazier off her, and knelt down.
“Gídí!”
James’s eyes, the thunderstorm blue of their son’s, watched her from the face of a savage with a red stripe painted beneath the eyes and across the nose. Flesh taut over cheekbones honed to sharpness, he had the arrogant, harsh beauty of a hawk.
She scarcely knew him; and yet she did.
Heedless of the dead man beside her, his blood streaking her body, she reached up and was in James’s arms, weeping with joy, alive again after all these years, a quietly shriveling tree revived by blessed rain. For an unreckonable time they held each other. She felt complete, as if a severed part of her had magically returned, healing a subtle wound that must eventually prove fatal.
“Gídí,” he said at last. “How did you come here?”
She told him.
“We have a son?” he asked, amazed, the English words slow. He tilted her face back as if to read it, though now the light was dim. It would be some hours till the moon rose. “A son, gídí? And you never told me?”
“I was going to, before you went to Camp Grant.” She laughed shakily. “Remember, when I asked to go with you, you said the people wouldn’t trust you if you came with a white woman? After that …”
They were both silent. After that he’d killed Cinco—and since, so many more. What his thoughts were she’d never know. The night wind pierced her and she began to shiver uncontrollably.
“We must make you clean,” he said.
Carrying her to the pool, he washed away the blood, then dried her carefully, as if she might break. She clung to him, wordlessly pleading, feeling the violent response of his manhood. But he pushed her away and thrust her dress into her hands.
“Jordan has raised my son. I will not betray him.”
Shamed but still consumed with longing, she whispered, “Just this once, James! Once to remember—”
“No!”
Turning his back while she dressed, he seemed to be thinking aloud. “I have eight warriors. They’re waiting for me to decide if we should attack that camp of soldiers at the head of your valley. We could hit them by night, when they’re not expecting Apaches, then sweep the settlement. But I cannot do that to Jordan’s people, those who have sheltered you and my son. I will tell my warriors that. I can’t compel them, but I believe they’ll listen to me.”
Cat shuddered. “If they don’t?”
“They’ll have to kill me.” James laughed. “I don’t think any of them will want to try that. We can push on toward the reservation and find plenty of soldiers to fight there.”
Cat shut her jaws against an outcry. What could she expect? His sparing the camp and valley was more than she could have dared hope from Fierro.
What had she hoped? That their reunion, so deep, so absolute, should end abruptly seemed too cruel, unbearable. But what could there be for Jordan’s wife and Fierro?
They must separate again, like a river sundered by a volcanic upsurge of primeval rock. But it would be as if he took with him her blood and breath and left only a flesh-covered skeleton.
All the passion of her being rebelled. Wildly, she thought of begging to go with him; but even if he allowed it, and she knew he wouldn’t, Jordan would try to track them and might be killed.
There was nothing for them. But even in her agony she was grateful to have seen him and been in his arms again. And at least he knew they had a child. Michael, born of their loving, would live and act, be some part of them in the world long after they were dead.
That must have been in James’s mind. Near Cat but not touching her as she dressed, he said, “Our son. What is he like?”
“Oh, James!” That they would never see each other, never share pride and joy, never have even the simple, everyday father-son things … Swallowing, Cat brought herself under control and tried to give her love at least a picture of his boy.
“His eyes and the bones of his face are just like yours. His skin is in between yours and mine, though the sun keeps it more like yours. He has curly red-gold hair like my father’s and Patrick’s, and I think he’ll be tall.”
“But what is he like?”
“He’s good at all the things boys do and already can work hard. He loves to read. I’ve taught him to shoot a bow and arrow, and he knows about White Painted Woman and Born of the Waters.” Cat struggled, trying to make some coherent linkage of all the things that were a normally intent, inquisitive ten-year-old who was yet altogether different from his friends. “He’s always taken care of hurt animals and birds. He’s cured quite a few of them, and he’s better at treating bad cuts and burns than even Jared, who’s taught him all he knows. It seems to hurt him when someone else is hurt. Maybe he’ll be a doctor.”
James lightly smoothed her face. “That would be good. I have killed men. He may heal them.”
“Is it true that you were at Nocadelklinny’s dancing?”
“Yes. I came because all the clans were gathering, dropping their selfish feuds, drawing together. It was a hope. There is none now.”
“You could go to Mexico.” Cat caught her breath in sudden hope. “James, you could drop all this warring! Go home to the Socorro, live far up some cañon as we used to think we’d do!”
He shook his head. “I cannot abandon my people. I hope our son will help them someday. You must go to your house now. I’ll blot the sign of what happened and dump the officer closer to his camp so they’ll find him in the morning.”
She longed to throw herself into his arms, but his manner forbade it. She raised her fingers to his face and touched the beloved features, trying to brand them on her senses.
“Good-bye, James. I love you. I always have. I always will.”
“Good-bye, gídí. Take care of our son.”
Her legs seemed to have no strength, yet somehow, commanded, they carried her away.
Frazier’s body was found next morning, only a short distance from the sentry. The scouts identified the moccasin tracks as Mimbreño. It appeared that the captain had gone for a walk and been killed by a single renegade who, inexplicably, hadn’t ambushed the sentry or tried to run off any animals.
The other patrols came in that day and next. The captain leading one of them assumed command of the joined forces. They buried Frazier on a gentle slope, blowing Taps, at the time that Jordan and his men rode in, and early next morning the troops set out for the embattled reservation.
Keeping their weapons handy, the Scott Valley men went back to their woodcutting, but they worked where they could watch their homes and come at once if needed. They had found plenty of signs on their expedition and exchanged shots with two Apaches who got away, but their presence seemed to have discouraged any gathering at Turret Mountain.
“The tracks of one group seemed headed for the Mogollon Rim,” said Jordan. “Others went off in the direction of San Carlos. The army’s in for hot times there, and we’d all better keep an eye peeled.”
“Especially after the way they murdered Captain. Frazier right at the camp,” said young Dick excitedly. “It’s funny they killed him instead of making off with the mules and horses or stealing our women an
d children.”
Ruth’s lips quivered as she looked at Benjamin. “Poor Captain Frazier! He’d had supper with us the night before and seemed such a pleasant, entertaining gentleman.”
Cat said nothing. She didn’t want anyone dead, but she couldn’t pretend sadness at Frazier’s killing. In fact, she was so numbed at meeting and losing James that she did her work mechanically, unable to take her thoughts from him. Terrible to realize that unless his head was brought in for a price, she’d probably never know what had happened to him. There would be word of a raid here, an attack there, and finally no more rumors.
The day after the troops moved out, a young lieutenant came riding hard, accompanied by a single scout. To the men who came down from their felling and riving and the women who came from their work he gasped out his story.
The patrols had fanned out on the way to San Carlos, hoping to meet any hostiles in their way. His group had been ambushed by eight or nine warriors, who killed a dozen troopers before another patrol swarmed after the fire and joined the remnants of the first, driving the Apaches into the rocks above the river and killing most of them. But the leader was still alive, refuged in a cave. The scouts had recognized him. He was Fierro!
Cat smothered a cry. Jordan put his arm around her. “What do you want us to do?” he asked the lieutenant.
“We don’t want Fierro to get away,” the young man said, thankfully draining the buttermilk one of the women had gone to bring him and the scout. “But we need to be on the march for Fort Apache. If we storm him, he can kill maybe half a dozen before we get him, and we don’t have time to starve him out. But if a few of your militia would take over—”
“We could take Fierro!” Dick shouted, eyes shining. “Dad! Jordan! We could catch or kill the biggest of them all!”
“Will you do it?” the lieutenant asked. “I don’t have to remind you that you’re protecting your own lives and your families.”
“You don’t have to remind us,” Jared agreed dryly. As he glanced around at his kinsmen and neighbors there was a chorus of assent.
“Rest while we bring our teams down and get ready,” Jared advised the weary young officer. “Where is Fierro?”
“About twenty miles up the Verde, in a cave beneath that big cliff that’s shaped like an eagle with its wings spread,” said the soldier, sliding off his sweating mount and thanking Michael, who led the horses off for watering and graze. “If we can leave within two hours, we’ll be there by night. That’s when we have to watch closest, in case he tries to slip away.”
“Well, I guess we can take over that chore for you,” said Jared. Turning to the valley men, he asked for a dozen volunteers. The others would stay to guard the settlement. In a few minutes the selection was made. Once again Jordan was the leader.
Cat heard it all through a burning haze. James trapped, perhaps wounded, maybe even dead by now? And if he lived, Jordan constrained to be in charge of the force that would kill or starve him out.
The men were already hurrying, some to bring tools and teams from the forest, others to see to their rifles and other preparations. Jared came to Cat.
“I’m sorry, Katie. If there’s a way to save him alive, I will. If he’ll surrender—”
“He won’t.”
Jordan gave her a long look of pain and love and pity. Then he strode off toward the mountain for his team.
Cat didn’t follow. An hour or two till the group started? If she left right now, she could get there before Jordan’s men did. Perhaps she could persuade James to give up. Probably she couldn’t; but she could help him if he was hurt, take him food. Be with him at the end, whatever it was.
Sangre, seldom ridden now, pastured across the river, not on this side with the commonly used stock. She couldn’t carry a saddle to him, but she could take a bridle, a blanket, and one of the leather surcingles the children sometimes used to hold a blanket on when they didn’t have a saddle. She hated to leave without a word to Jordan or the others, but they mustn’t guess what she was doing. She felt no disloyalty to them. She wasn’t going to help Fierro fight; only to live if that might be, or, failing that, to die. At the house she hastily got jerky, nuts, and dried fruit, then started for the stable.
Not to see Michael—Her heart leaped as she met him coming out of the shed where he’d been rubbing down the horses, giving them some grain.
She gave him a quick hug, which he squirmingly resisted, and a quicker kiss on his brown cheek. “Michael, I just have to go for a ride, and I’m taking Sangre. I don’t want anyone stopping me with Indian scares, so, unless you’re asked, don’t say anything about it till suppertime.”
His brows rushed together. “Won’t you be back by then?”
Her heart wrenched. But he was surrounded by love, by good people who cared for him. He didn’t need her the way James did.
“I don’t know when I’ll be back,” she said, pretending to be cross. “Goodness, Michael, don’t be so grouchy! Have you got any food down your sick fawn today?”
“Guess I’d better try again,” he said, and, his mind turned to one of his “patients,” he hurried away, bright hair brushed by her fingers. She looked after him for just a second, then moved into the stable.
Sangre came at her whistle, lipped the handful of grain she’d brought him. He was sixteen now, but in excellent condition. Cat didn’t have time to ride as often as she’d have liked, but when she did, he gave her all she asked.
The blanket was far less comfortable than a saddle, but at least the surcingle kept it from slipping. They were shielded from the settlement by the thick growth of trees along the river, and Cat, while they were on level land, nudged the bay into a lope. When the valley narrowed again, she had to keep close to the river, where trees and rocks made progress slow.
As she rode, speaking now and then to Sangre, who kept one ear pricked back to her as he always had, she remembered James as a boy of fourteen when he first came back from the Apaches, how she’d missed him when he returned to them, how strange he’d seemed when he came back, and how her love had grown. She remembered his little house and smiled to recall her happiness in buying things for it, pretending it was theirs.… They’d never had a place together, only two nights on serapes spread on straw matting.
Still, they had a son, straight and quick and kind, with healing in his hands.
She thought of her brothers then, and wished she could see their children, and Marc and Talitha’s Judith, and Shea, who must be fifteen now, and the children of her old ranch playmates. Faces of those she’d loved passed before her. Anita, her milk-mother; Carmencita; the vaqueros, especially dear, barrel-chested Belen; Talitha, who’d been both sister and mother. And she remembered her tall, flame-haired father, with the brands marking his cheek, one given in hate, one accepted out of love.
Her mother she could not remember, but she felt oddly close to her now.
She let Sangre drink when he was thirsty but didn’t stop till, in late afternoon, she was challenged by a scout, who brought her to the commanding captain. The scout said Fierro was still in the cave across the river. She told the captain she’d known Fierro as a boy, that he’d been her foster brother.
“If I can talk to him, perhaps he’ll surrender,” she said.
The captain, a brawny, sandy-haired man, stared at her curiously. “And what does your husband think of this, Mrs. Scott?”
“He doesn’t know I came. Naturally, I’m very anxious that he and my foster brother don’t fight each other.”
“I don’t know …” The captain deliberated, rubbing his mustache. “Truth to tell, Mrs. Scott, I don’t want Fierro to surrender. We’ve just buried thirteen good men he and his renegades killed.”
“But you don’t have time to wait him out,” Cat reminded. “You want my husband to do that—and I have to keep them from hurting each other.”
A lieutenant cleared his throat. “Why don’t you let her try, sir? We have to get to Fort Apache, but it still doesn’t look
good for the army to leave civilians to smoke out a savage they couldn’t kill or capture.”
Abruptly deciding, the captain frowned at Cat. “You’re not taking him ammunition?”
“No,” she said truthfully. Before she’d gotten close to where she expected soldiers, she’d fastened the packets of jerky, nuts, and dried fruit around her waist beneath her skirts.
He shrugged. “All right. Guess it can’t hurt to try, though why you’d own up to having a foster brother like that beats me! Sure he won’t fire on you?”
“I’ll call to him.” She stroked Sangre, held his muzzle close to her a moment. “Will someone look after my horse?”
A trooper took the reins. Dryly, the captain said, “You’ll excuse me if I don’t escort you to the river?”
Cat laughed. “By all means, Captain.”
“Good luck,” he said.
As she approached the bank, she shouted. “James! It’s Cat! I’m coming across!”
“Caterina?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t! Stay where you are.”
“I have to talk to you.”
“Talk’s no use.”
“I’m coming.”
“Stay there or I’ll shoot!”
She didn’t believe him; and if he would shoot, nothing mattered any longer anyhow. Her love was in danger. Kilting up her skirts, she threaded a way over boulders and drifted logs, wading shallows till at last she climbed up a spill of great rocks on the opposite side. The cave was above and beyond it, the top of the jagged hole visible.
As she made her way up the rocks, she saw several bodies—Apaches, sprawled where they had fallen. Animals had been at them and they were beginning to smell.
The cave had been used as a shelter, for the natural boulders fallen in front of it had been filled in with more rocks so that a breastwork about four feet high shielded almost the whole mouth. One man could hold off attackers for a long time here, since they’d have to scramble, exposed, up the rocks from the river.
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