The night was intensely sharp and the air chilly. She wrapped her arms about her knees as she perched atop a massive stone buttress overlooking the ravine, where gigantic, rough-barked cottonwoods grew. Behind her, oak and hackberry branches formed a canopy for her.
Night was Mattie’s time. She had an affinity with the moon and the stars. From the rim, she listened to the sounds of nature. To the noise of rocks creaking and speaking aloud. The nocturnal serenade of the coyote awakened that wild part of her soul. Not wild in the sense of being out of control but more akin to living at one with nature, as she had with the Netdahe Apaches.
She missed dancing barefoot in the grass, the campfires with their billowing incense, the scent of burning piñon, the sound of the tom-toms and the crackling of resinous pine logs.
That freedom had become domesticated with her return to Fort Lowell’s civilization. She had lost track of her wildness. She knew that when that happened to the Indian, when they became blanket Indians, they often died without even getting sick.
She was sorry to see the rose hue lighting the ridges to the east. She slip-slid down the boulder trail to the bottom of the ravine. Halpern was beginning to stir. With a minimum of motion, he coiled up his bedroll.
After finger-combing the leaves and twigs from her hair, she tugged on her sombrero and started packing her own gear.
“Do the wolves run in big packs?” he asked.
“T’wasn’t the yip of wolves ye heard last night.” She tossed her saddle blanket over her mount. “Coyotes. Wolves do prowl the Sierra Madres, though. Sometimes, they’d come to the clearings near our wickiups. I’d wake up and see them dancing in the moonlight.” Over the back of his bay that he was saddling, he regarded her with bemusement. “Such a wild woman I have hired to guide me to Nantez.”
She jerked her saddle’s latigo and slapped down the stirrup leathers. “Look, Halpern, I don’t have the foggiest notion of where Nantez is right now. He’s always on the move. But his favorite stronghold is the area around the brink of the Big Canyon.”
“The big canyon?”
“The Mexicans call it Barranca del Cobre. There’s an abundance of water and wildlife. Jaguars, mountain lions, wolves, and grizzly bears. If ye can imagine the end of the earth, that’s it.” She swung up into the saddle. “While I’m not pleased as punch about riding into a Mexican town, I’d not like to strike out for Barranca del Cobre with the wee supplies we have left in our pack saddles. I think there may be a village, Frontera, not far from here, down on the desert floor.”
“Think?” He mounted up. “What if—”
“Me knowledge of the area isn’t the most reliable. I already told ye that.” She nudged her horse onto the narrow path that dropped down between two steep limestone walls. Wisps of sunlight were already dispersing the night’s chill.
“Maybe we can hire someone in this Frontera to—”
“To shoot us in the back when we’re not looking,” she said grimly. “Bingham was our best bet, or I wouldn’t have dealt with him. Believe me.”
“Bingham vanished,” he reminded her, falling in step behind her. “Just as you said Nantez was capable of doing. You were going to tell me how he accomplished such a feat, remember?”
While talking didn’t come easily for her—and especially to Halpern, who made her feel most uncomfortable—she decided it would make the hours in the saddle pass more quickly. “When Nantez is on the move, which is most of the time, he has his band travel in groups. He designates an assembly point for nightfall of the next day. If the camp is attacked, everyone scatters.”
“So the scouts have a hard time tracking down Nantez and his people because of the many diverging trails?”
“Aye. Most of which disappear in the rocks anyway.”
“But eventually, Nantez has to make camp again, doesn’t he?”
The trail widened, and she made way for Halpern to ride up beside her. The pines and firs were giving way to oaks and willows dotting the shallow canyons that laced the foothills.
“True,” she said. “But at a predetermined rendezvous point the next day, the women build an imitation camp. They erect several wickiups and small campfires. An old worn-out horse is tied to a tree to make it look as though the camp is occupied. Then the band moves on for several miles and establishes its real camp elsewhere. The cavalry scouts lie in wait all through the night ready to attack at daybreak—when their attack lands upon a fake camp!”
“Cunning,” Halpern said. “Which makes me wonder if you are, also.”
Her head swiveled toward him. “What?”
“Cunning.” He arched a questioning brow. “Did you and the preacher set me up?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He pulled up ahead of her, blocking the path of her horse with his own mount. He leaned forward in the saddle, those powerful hands resting on the pommel comfortably. But she wasn’t deceived. His hard-edged smile confirmed her wariness. “Did you think to relieve me of the entire three grand early on, Mattie?”
She cocked her head, trying to figure out what he was thinking. Then she knew. “I didn’t take ye for a fool, Halpern—to bring the three grand with ye. Ye didn’t do that, did ye?”
“No, but enough to keep the three of us in supplies—your suggestion, remember? Well, it’s gone, too. Nearly two hundred dollars. I want it back.”
She could feel the heat creeping up the back of her neck. “Ye want it back, do ye? Then go after Bingham. But make up your bloody mind. Do ye want the money or your wife back? Which is it?”
A vein in his temple began to throb.
Life with Nantez had taught her to watch for signs. Her gaze dropped to his hands. But they didn’t ball up into mighty fists.
Something that had happened in his life must have taught him to watch for signs, as well. His eyes, flecked with gold in the sunlight, studied her face. What was he looking for?
At last, he grasped the reins. “I’ve got enough tucked away on me to replace the essentials. After that—well, I hope you can pull a rabbit out of a hat.”
Right now, she’d settle for pulling a bucketful of water from a well. The morning was growing hotter as the sun climbed the sky’s blue dome.
They stopped in the foothills to shed their jackets. Beyond stretched an ocean of desert with only olive-green tufts to break the white landscape. Farther to the south rose the jagged, granite walls of the formidable Sierra Madres. From her viewpoint, the Mexican mountain range looked like an enormous, crenelated castle.
Since their confrontation over the missing money earlier in the day, neither of them bothered to speak. There was nothing to say.
Actually, that wasn’t true. She wanted to know more about him. He might be a greenhorn as Bingham claimed, but this man also seemed fearless. She couldn’t help but admire his sterling endeavor to save his wife. “Ye’ve been married to your wife a long time?” she asked.
“Seven years.”
“Any children?”
“No.”
“You’re as parsimonious as a Scotsman with your words, ye are.”
“What is it you want to know exactly?”
“I want to know about this woman who commands such devotion from ye.”
“She believed in my work, my painting, when I wasn’t sure I believed in them myself. She led me to myself. She was a pathway for my lost soul.”
“Oh.” There was nothing subtle about the man. Mattie wished she hadn’t asked. Comparisons with a virginal goddess, for all consideration, could only make her feel less than worthy.
She shrugged off further curiosity and conserved her energy for the grueling pace required if they were to reach Frontera by sunset. She knew it was to the southeast, but wasn’t certain how far. Or exactly where.
She must be crazy, a female Don Quixote, to charge off into Mexico with as little information and resources as she had.
But, then, what else could she have done? To let Albert go back to Nantez me
ant giving up hope of something better for her child. Even if she were wrong—that she could provide that hope of something better—she loved her wee one like her own life.
She had carried her son beneath her heart and suckled him at her breast. No, she couldn’t give up on him. Not now. Later, when he matured into his manhood . . . then, if he still wanted to return to the Indian way of life, he could.
But, first, she had to find him and bring him back to her world. Did she even have a world anymore? A world that she fit into?
The day seemed interminable. A bouncing tumbleweed was the only movement on the horizon. The monotonous rhythm of the horse hooves crunching into the sand was the only sound. Sweat trickled down Mattie’s ribcage and dampened the shirtwaist under her armpits. The air was so hot and still that her mouth felt like cotton.
They had ridden two days without seeing another human being. The entire area had been ravaged by Apaches over the years. Few settlers were either courageous or foolhardy enough to live outside the protection of a community. The few split-shake cabins and log corrals she saw were obviously abandoned.
The mauve-hued mountains seemed to retreat capriciously from her, but, at last, the terra-cotta belfry of Frontera’s Jesuit mission came into view. Its sun-bleached stone arches were hung with drooping vines. Further on, wrought-iron balconies were festooned with flowers. The dusty little one-street village possessed a raw charm that Tucson lacked.
A fork of the Bavispe River, flowing beneath the pueblo’s foundations, attributed to the town being established in the middle of the desert. A trickle of the underground river ran into the plaza’s fountain.
Pistoleers on horseback shared the narrow street that blocked off the plaza with a wood-laden ox cart, a string of pack burros, and dusty-faced miners from nearby mines that had once financed the Spanish armada.
From arched doorways Mexican women in long cotton skirts and blazing kerchiefs hawked pottery and baskets and nopalitos.
Mattie had sworn if she ever reached civilization, she would never eat cactus again.
Every corner and niche of the pale, rose-colored adobe houses and buildings contained talismans: a poker-faced wooden mask, a rough-hewn cross, a wreath of thorns, a statue stained with purple berry juice, representing the blood of Christ.
As she and Halpern trotted their horses around the central square, with its three mountain madronas that sagged sadly, the belfry’s big, black-iron bell began to toll for evening mass. That meant the tiendas and mercado would be closed.
Brown water beckoned her thirsty pony to quaff noisily from a nearby tin horse trough. She swallowed back her own thirst and had to restrain herself from dropping down before it to douse her heat-reddened face.
Other than the mission, a cantina with batwing doors turned out to be the only public establishment open. The knife at her own thigh and the Marlin slung across her back scarcely reassured her.
When she dismounted, her legs felt wobbly from her having sat in the saddle so long. She was more accustomed to walking long distances than riding for lengthy hours uninterrupted.
Halpern’s hand at her elbow steadied her. It had been so long since she had been touched by a man, that she flinched at the chivalrous gesture.
His eyes turned as dark as his mustache. “I wasn’t going to ravish you.”
“That’s a dirty thing to say.”
He had the gallantry to look contrite.
She sidestepped him and headed for the cantina. Inside, her eyes had to adjust to the smoke-hazed room. Kerosene and candlelight showed brown bottles of pulque lined up like infantry soldiers on a mahogany bar. Vaqueros and campesinos with machetes roped to their waists hunched over the bar.
At the sound of the flapping slatted doors, the shifty-eyed lot turned to stare at her. One face reminded her of a knife artiste who looked as if he would be delighted to carve her into an objet d’art.
She stepped back onto Halpern’s boot, but it was too late for retreat. She looked up into his face, flashed him a smile and took his arm in hers. “A grand place, isn’t it, husband, luv? Can ye see about getting us a room for the night? I simply must sit and rest.”
He looked too astonished to tell her no. She watched him approach the mustachioed hombre at the end of the bar, then she sought out the nearest table. If possible, her legs felt even wobblier than they had upon dismounting.
At the bar, the third Mexican from the left was still watching her. He wore the pajama-like clothing of the common campesino. Strapped to his tooled-leather belt was that all-too-familiar pearl-handled knife.
Dias muire, but she was fortunate her sombrero shielded her face!
His face . . . well, it wasn’t one she would forget: it was weathered, with a hawk nose, fierce eyes, and sideburns that were as wild and bushy as desert chaparral.
Halpern came to her table, two bottles in one hand, cane jauntily carried in the other. In a lowered voice, he demanded, “All right, what’s going on, Mattie?”
“The man at the bar with the beastly sideburns. I know him,” she whispered.
“Yes?”
She half-turned away, so that she was mainly facing Halpern. In the cantina’s murky candlelight, his earring gleamed like gold among coal. “He’s Kiko O’Neil. Half-Mexican, half-Irish. He works both sides of the fence. Sells stolen Mexican and American weapons to the Apaches, and Apache scalps to the Mexicans, who pay a bounty for the grizzly souvenirs.” Halpern took a sip of the pulque, made a face at the pungent taste, and said, “Go on.”
“I’ve seen O’Neil half a dozen times in Nantez’s camp. And once more—here in Frontera. When Albert and I were fleeing Nantez, we stumbled into the carniceria. ” She had tried hard to tell its butcher that she had been a captive of Nantez, but the words wouldn’t come. She had forgotten English! Instead, the Gaelic words of her childhood had stuttered from her sun-blistered lips.
Not understanding her, and noticing Albert’s obvious Indian features, the man behind the bar had thought her to be Indian and had summoned O’Neil to interpret.
“O’Neil recognized me. He told the local butcher he would take me and Albert over to the mission and the padre. I knew that Albert and I wouldna live to see the baptismal font much less the padre.” Taking Albert’s hand, she had tried to run, but O’Neil had been quicker. He had yanked her back beside him and the butcher. Albert, only five at the time, had looked up in bewilderment at O’Neil, who was bragging about the latest string of scalps he had taken.
She knew they had belonged to a peaceful band of Warm Springs Apaches who had taken refuge in the Sierra Madres, rather than submit to being confined at the desolate San Carlos reservation northeast of Tucson.
“What happened?” Halpern asked, interrupting her memories.
She shrugged and took a deep swig from her bottle. “I was desperate. I grabbed the butcher’s big knife from the chopping table. In that next instant, O’Neil twisted to one side. The knife missed his bowels. Embedded itself instead between two of his lower ribs. Once again, Albert and I were on the run.”
Thoughtfully, Halpern stroked his mustache where it bridged the indentation of his lip. “The room has cost us just about all that I—”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what—”
“Nothing we can do about it now. Except make use of the room. We both need the rest. By tomorrow morning, maybe our trader-in-humanity won’t be around. You go on up. Room Three. I’ll get the saddlebags.”
She nodded and went to climb a narrow staircase, which creaked with each step. The hallway, lit by a single candle ensconced in tin, looked as seedy as those she had heard about over in Tucson’s Gay Alley. Old newspaper peeled from the walls, revealing chipped plaster and mud brick beneath. The stale smell of urine drifted from the corner.
Apache wickiups were more appealing. But what waited downstairs wasn’t.
She opened the door to Room Three. On a rustic pine washstand sat a chipped porcelain commode, along with an oil lamp. Its flame cast a
yellow light on the already dingy walls.
Then she noticed the bed. It had no sheets, leaving its mattress ticking exposed.
She felt herself go hot. Her stomach knotted. Her pulse pounded in her ears. She swallowed back painful memories. She was no longer a captive. She could leave at any time—and she would!
She swung around and collided with a man. Her gasp was nearly as loud as a scream. Blindly, her fist lashed out at him. Her sombrero tumbled off.
He dropped the saddle bags and caught her against him. “Mattie, it’s me! Gordon!”
She tried to slow down her galloping breath. “I canna! I canna sleep there . . . with you!”
His gaze darted to the bed and then returned to her. His hazel eyes glowed softly, like the aurora borealis on a clear night in the Highlands. “You don’t have to, Mattie. I’ll take the floor.”
She drew away, saying, “No, I’m meself now. Just keep to your side of the bed.”
“My stomach is growling,” he said, closing the door behind them. “At this moment, even canned peaches sound appetizing.”
Her stomach still churned, but food was not a priority. She collected her saddle bag and sombrero and dropped them in a mound near the bed. She was so tired she could not stand. The mattress sagged with her.
He set his saddlebags down, then arranged his black hat and cane carefully atop. She watched him go to the washstand, pour water from the ewer, and begin to wash the grime from his face.
“An exercise in futility,” she said. “The dust even blows through the cracks in the boards. You’ll wake up tomorrow morning, dust-coated.”
“An exercise in the discipline of civilized souls.” His fastidiousness annoyed her.
“Besides, gathering dust has its own corrupt smell.” He sat down on the opposite side of the bed.
She watched him forage around in his saddlebags for a can and fork. With his back against the wall, he peeled off the can’s tin top and began to eat.
Feeling safer now, she took her medicine pouch from her saddlebags and extracted her jar of glycerin and rose water. She could feel his eyes on her as she removed her moccasins. The tinny tinkle of their decorative strips was the only sound in the small room. Sharing the supportive wall with him, she began massaging the precious ointment into her left sole.
Tame the Wildest Heart Page 5