Sister Natalie looked him up and down. “Probably it will be the first bath you’ve had in some time. Now I suggest you get up there and drive.”
Ned didn’t dare open his mouth again. Weren’t nuns supposed to be meek and humble? This woman reminded him more and more of Aunt Alla.
What if the injured woman regained consciousness and tried to get away? She might hurt the nuns if she tried to escape from the coach.
He started to speak, but Sister Natalie’s glare made him think better of it. If the stage hadn’t been spanking new, he’d have slammed the door. He closed it firmly and hoisted himself to the driver’s box.
“What do you make of it?” Brownie asked.
Ned unwrapped the reins from the brake handle.
“White woman in Comanche regalia, and it’s not sudden. She smells like an Indian.”
Brownie laughed. “Is she sick?”
“I don’t know. She looks beat up.”
“Maybe her tribe doesn’t want her anymore if she’s sick.” Brownie raised his chin, looking far out over the grassy plain. “More likely she escaped.”
“Nah.” Brownie shook his head. “They don’t escape. Not if they’ve been in captivity very long.”
CHAPTER THREE
The stagecoach rolled up to the home station at Fort Chadbourne an hour later. “We should have brought her here,” Ned said to Brownie as the tenders came out to hold the mules’ heads.
“Sister Natalie is right—they’ll take better care of her. They’re good at nursing.”
“How do you know?”
Brownie shrugged. “That’s the kind of thing they do.”
Ned climbed down and stalked toward the commander’s office, leaving Brownie to stand guard while two men unloaded the mail.
Captain Tapley’s office, in a stone building facing the parade ground, held two desks, two chairs, a potbellied stove, and a few shelves. Maps and notices papered the walls. He’d been commander of the fort for about six months. The sergeant who assisted with the regiment’s paperwork rose when Ned entered.
“May I help you, sir?”
Ned pulled his hat off and looked to where Tapley sat, hunched over his desk. “I came to report to Captain Tapley that we found a woman lying on the road about six miles east of here. She’s sick—exhausted, maybe, and she had some bruises. We took her in the stagecoach and left her at the nuns’ mission house.”
Tapley stood and walked toward Ned, his face showing concern. “Who is she? Do you know?”
Ned shook his head. “She’s white, but she was all got up like a Comanche. Her hair’s quite light—might be blond when all the tallow’s washed out of it. And her eyes are bluer than yours, sir.”
“She was unconscious?”
“Out cold when I left her with the sisters. She opened her eyes for a few seconds when we found her, but didn’t say anything. Two of the nuns were riding with me, and they said they’d nurse her to health.” Ned watched the captain’s face for signs of displeasure but saw none. “Otherwise I’d have carried her here, sir.”
“No, that’s all right,” Tapley said. “I’m sure the Ursulines will give her good care. Will you pass back that way?”
“Tomorrow. And we’ll come back westbound on Friday.”
Tapley nodded. “If the sisters think she needs medical treatment, I can ask our surgeon to ride out there. And send me word if the woman’s ready for questioning.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll do that.”
“I’ll ask around in the meantime and see if anyone has a clue who she is.”
“Well, sir, I’ve been thinking on it for the last hour, and I believe it might be wise not to let it be known where she is. Those nuns don’t have any protection out there, and until you know that woman’s story …”
“Good thinking. The Indians show up at the most inconvenient times. Your name is Bright, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. Ned Bright.”
“You’re Patrillo Garza’s partner?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you think this woman’s been living among the Comanche?”
“Sure looked like it. She had on their type of clothes, and her hair was loose, with the part painted red, the way their women do. And she didn’t seem to have a horse. Looked as if she’d walked across the range alone.”
Tapley frowned. “Curious. If you can check on the sisters and their guest when you pass, it will relieve my mind. I’ll try to get out there in a few days and take a look at her myself. If she’s able to talk, maybe we’ll get some answers.”
Ned hesitated. “I’m told they usually can’t speak English if they’ve been long in captivity.”
“We’ll have to see, won’t we? Meanwhile, I’ll send out a message along the line and to all the forts, reporting that a captive woman has been found. How old do you think she is?”
“Hard to say, with her face all purple and swelled up. But I don’t think she’s too old.”
Tapley drummed his fingers on his desk. “Well, thirteen or thirty?”
“Somewhere in between, I’d guess. Nearer twenty than thirty.”
“Blue eyes, you said.” Tapley went behind the desk, sat down, and scribbled in the margin of a paper. “Any other identifying marks?”
“Not that I could tell. Maybe the nuns will know more tomorrow.”
“Yes. Perhaps the woman will have told them who she is. I understand several children were captured in this area over the last few years.”
“That’s true. Too many.”
Tapley nodded. “I haven’t been here long, but my men have had several brushes with raiding parties. Perhaps I’d better send a detachment out to the mission tomorrow or the next day, just to check on things.”
Ned stepped toward the door. “Thank you, Captain. I’ll be over at the home station. The stage crew will be sleeping there regularly.”
When he reached the yard, the stage still waited before the station with the fresh team in harness. Several passengers were handing their luggage to one of the tenders before they boarded.
Ned went into the station and found Brownie eating a belated dinner or an early supper—a plate of beans, bacon, and cornbread.
“Wash out back, or Miz Stein won’t feed you,” Brownie said between bites.
Ned ambled out to the back of the house. He’d eaten here before, on their freighting trips, and he should have remembered. The station agent’s wife was particular about the cleanliness of her establishment and those who patronized it.
He washed his hands in a tin basin that sat on top of a flour barrel, then splashed a little of the water on his face and dried off with a damp towel hanging on a hook nearby. The second time he entered the dining room, Brownie had a half-eaten slice of pie before him.
Ned hung up his hat and his coiled whip. He had barely sat down before the plump German lady came toward him carrying a heaped plate and a mug of coffee.
“Guten tag, Herr Bright.”
“And good day to you, Mrs. Stein.” Ned grinned at her. “That looks edible. Thank you, ma’am.”
“Bitte.” She smiled and bobbed her head before retreating to the lean-to where she reigned over her step-top cookstove. The day Ned and Patrillo had hauled it in on a wagon drawn by eight mules had been one of celebration at Fort Chadbourne. Other than days when she put the blacking to it, that stove never cooled off. In the summer the kitchen would get so hot, no one but Mrs. Stein would venture in there.
Mrs. Stein’s food was plain but plentiful and well seasoned, which was more than Ned could bank on at the army mess. He’d eaten there several times before the Steins came and opened their stop for travelers. In Ned’s opinion, Mrs. Stein’s provender outshone the army’s anytime. With Fort Chadbourne now on the coast-to-coast overland mail route, the Steins’ place had been the obvious choice for a home station.
Once his belly was full, he wandered out to the corrals. Brownie and the tenders lounged against the fence, debating the merits of the mules that br
owsed their hay inside, and the difficulty of keeping them secure.
“Can’t put ’em out to pasture,” said Sonny, a skinny boy of seventeen. “Too much Indian activity.”
Brownie adjusted his hat and nodded. “That’s right. Leave them in the open, and they’d be gone in the morning.”
The second tender, Dutch, was older than Sonny. He’d recently been hired by the stage line’s division agent and assigned to the Steins’ station. He let out a sigh. “We have to stay up all night guarding them. At least Herr Stein takes a turn.”
Brownie glanced at Ned. “I was tellin’ ’em about the woman we found.” Ned nodded.
“Did you bring her to the fort?” Sonny asked.
“She’s being looked after,” Ned said quickly. He gave Brownie a look he hoped the shotgun messenger would understand. “The captain’s putting the word out. We don’t know who she is, but folks who’ve lost a girl over the last—I don’t know, ten years or so—can inquire at his office.”
Dutch shrugged. “I knew a family back in Mason County that lost a couple of kids. Hard thing.”
“Yup.” Brownie turned away from the fence. “I’m heading over to the barracks. Coming, Ned?”
Ned shook his head. Brownie knew he wouldn’t go—Ned never went with him to find a card game. “I’ll be in the house.”
He went around the back to the little room given over to the stage crews. Mrs. Stein had made up the beds with clean sheets and homemade quilts, and she’d left a pitcher of water and a plate covered with a dish towel. There were even a couple of books on the shelf over the washstand. That surprised Ned. One was a small German book of some kind. The other was in English—The Scarlet Letter. Ned laid it on the bottom bunk.
He lifted the corner of the towel over the plate. Doughnuts. He smiled as he took one and covered the rest to keep the bugs off. This was some pumpkins!
Taabe Waipu awoke slowly. The first thing she saw was a white wall. She caught her breath and tried to sit up. Pain ran through her head like stampeding horses, and she clapped a hand to her brow. She was lying on a bed built up off the floor.
Carefully she moved her legs, hoping to swing them from between the coverings and over the side. Immediate pain in her right ankle stopped her. She lay still for a minute, sucking air between clenched teeth.
Finally she felt ready to try again. She lifted the top blanket and slowly slid her foot to the edge. When it hung over the side, she pushed herself up with her arms and sat on the edge of the bed, shaking. Pain throbbed in her skull and her cheek. She put her fingertips cautiously to her face and gritted her teeth. The right side was painful and puffy.
Her injured ankle was bound with strips of cloth, but she could see it was swollen to twice its normal size. She touched her foot experimentally to the floor. Pain made her wince and lift it. She ran her hands over the white garment she wore. Its softness surprised her. And why would anyone wear white? More mysterious—how did they make it so white?
She looked around. Two of the walls were made of dried clay, the other two of boards. All were whitewashed. One of the adobe walls held a narrow aperture about a foot high and four inches wide. It looked as though the walls were at least eight inches thick. The opening seemed more of a slit to shoot arrows through than a window. No man could fit through it.
On the wall over her bed hung a small carving of a man on a torture rack. She studied it for a long time but couldn’t guess why it was there. Next to the bed was a wooden stand, and on it a white pottery bowl with a gracefully shaped jug sitting in it. The white jug had a handle, and lifelike flowers were painted on the bulging side. Taabe touched the pitcher. The pottery felt cool and smooth, almost slippery. She peered inside. The jug held water.
She lifted it and was about to put the curved edge to her lips when she spied a metal cup. Holding the heavy jug and pouring the water was difficult while sitting on the bed, and she splashed a little on herself. New pain shot up her leg as she tensed. She set the jug back in the bowl with a clunk and raised the cup to her mouth. The cool, sweet water must have been placed there recently. She drained the cup and set it beside the big, white bowl. Exhausted, she lay back on the bed and closed her eyes. From far away, she heard a faint sound. Music, but not like the songs of the Numinu. Gentle voices singing words she could not distinguish.
The creaking of the door’s hinges startled her. She jerked her eyes open and turned her head toward the sound. Her feet pushed instinctively on the bed, and she gasped at the fresh pain in her ankle.
A figure stood in the doorway—a form in a long black robe. The face was thin and as white as a skull. Taabe held back a scream. The eyes bored into her—eyes an odd, light brown, lighter than any Indian’s.
The face smiled. Then Taabe realized a woman wore the robe. A woman with a band of snow-white cloth around her face and a black head cloth on top. In her pale hands she held a board with dishes on it. The smell of food hit Taabe, and her stomach lurched. She couldn’t remember ever being so hungry.
The eastbound stage was due at Fort Chadbourne at ten the next morning. Ned was up early and ate a huge breakfast under Mrs. Stein’s beaming approval. He moseyed out to the stable and helped Sonny and Dutch tend to the livestock. Dutch yawned several times, and he looked a little bleary-eyed.
Brownie wandered out from the dining room an hour later and helped them groom the team of four big mules they’d take on their eastbound trip. They’d stop twice to change teams before they reached Tree and Ned’s ranch, sixty miles away. There another driver and shotgun rider would take over for the run past the ruins of Fort Phantom Hill and on toward Fort Belknap. Ned and Brownie would stay at the ranch until the next westbound stage arrived.
“I’m not sure about this twice-a-week schedule,” Ned said to Brownie as they lolled against the wall, watching the tenders hitch up the team.
“We’ll see how it goes this first week,” Brownie said. “We’re westbound Tuesday and Friday, and eastbound Wednesday and Sunday. If we need to, we can ride home from here on a Friday night and come back Sunday morning.”
“We’ll work it out.” Ned frowned, thinking about the convent between Fort Chadbourne and the ranch he and Patrillo owned. “Do we have any passengers this morning? I want to stop and get a report on the woman we left with the sisters.” Sisters. It came out easily now, though the concept was still foreign.
“Yeah, there’s two men wanting to ride to Fort Belknap. Herr Stein just sold them tickets. And there may be more on the inbound stage.”
Ned nodded. “Well, the captain asked me specifically to stop and look in at the mission. Maybe we can leave a couple of minutes early, if everyone’s ready to go.”
Brownie straightened. “I’ll go check on the mail.”
They walked toward the home station. From the fort’s grounds, a uniformed trooper strode toward them.
“Mr. Bright!”
Ned stopped walking. “You go on,” he told Brownie. He and the trooper met beside the house.
“The captain said to find you if you hadn’t left yet. There’s a couple over to his office who want to know about the captive woman you found.”
Ned looked back toward the stagecoach. “I’ve only got a few minutes.”
“Then let’s go.” The trooper led him at a fast walk across the parade ground between the barracks and officers’ quarters and left him outside Tapley’s office.
Ned rapped on the door and opened it.
“Come right in, Mr. Bright,” Captain Tapley called out.
Ned stepped into the dim room. The captain and his sergeant had given up their chairs for a man and a woman, who sprang to their feet on Ned’s entrance.
“You’re the one who found a white woman in Comanche dress?” the man asked.
“Yes.”
“Mr. Bright, these are the Cunninghams,” Tapley said. “They have a place a few miles south of here.”
“We came to the fort to do a little trading this morning and heard the news.�
� The man extended his hand to Ned.
“We lost our daughter,” his wife said, her voice choking. “Please, can you tell us about this young woman?”
“Well, she’s … When was your daughter taken? And how old would she be?”
“Two years ago, when the Indians stole the mail.” Mr. Cunningham glanced at his wife.
Ned nodded. “I remember.” Before the nationwide contract was assigned, the soldiers received sacks of local mail and helped deliver it to settlers in the area. “The raiders came into the fort to trade a few days later, and they had some of the cavalrymen’s things on them.”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Cunningham said. “The same day they ambushed the soldiers and stole the mail, our girl disappeared out of our yard. We never found a trace, except hoofprints and—and Sally’s—” She sobbed.
Her husband eyed Ned apologetically. “They threw her clothes on the ground.” He put his arm around his wife.
“I’m sorry,” Ned said. “That doesn’t mean they abused her. Seems they like to put their captives in their own type of clothing right away.” Or some have reported they were made to ride naked for days. But then they gave them buckskins to wear. Ned didn’t voice his thoughts.
Mrs. Cunningham sobbed louder, and her husband drew her close.
“She was ten,” Captain Tapley said. “From what you’ve told me, this young woman you found is probably not Sally Cunningham.”
Ned shook his head. “I strongly doubt it. Not if your Sally would be twelve now. This woman is older than that.”
“We need to see her,” Mrs. Cunningham said.
Her husband looked to Ned. “If we see her, we’ll know, one way or the other. If we don’t, we might keep wondering. And if she’s not Sally, well, it’s possible she might know something about her.”
Ned nodded. “All right. The stage is about to leave. Can you come along now?”
“Yes,” they said together.
Ned glanced at the captain. “The thing is, we won’t come back through until Friday. But the mission is only a few miles from here …”
Captive Trail Page 3