When they were within a dozen yards of the cacti, she signaled Albert and Gordon to wait. Wordlessly, she proceeded on, hoping that all the training of her life as an Apache squaw would at last bring something good, other than her bairn.
She scanned the area. The sand, the foothills crusted with sparse vegetation that clung to rocks like leaches, the shadows created by the agaves. There was nothing, nothing that moved. She hadn’t expected any sign of life. Not yet, anyway.
Slowly, she went down on all fours, then flat onto her stomach. With movement as infinitesimal as a glacier, she glided forward like a serpent in Eden. Except in no stretch of imagination was the vast Chihuahua Desert a resemblance of Eden.
When tips of the agave shaded her fingers, she lay still. She could feel the sun sizzling a patch of her flesh above the top of her moccasin, where her skirt had hitched up mid-thigh. Sweat beaded from her right temple, slithered over her cheekbone, and fell onto the sand. The droplet evaporated at once.
Minutes stretched out endlessly. She could only hope that behind her Albert and Gordon mimicked her stillness and silence.
Then, her patience produced results! A salamander. How long it had been there, she didn’t know. It was as if it had poked its head from beneath the sand. Or maybe, her sight finally accommodated itself to the illusive blending of her surroundings. The salamander’s black eyes stared at her and she stared back at it, waiting.
Please, come closer, lizard.
The lizard was her totem. It was a symbol to the Indian of silence, wisdom and good fortune. The dreamer who basks in the light of the sun. The seeker of the shadow, who finds there the fears and hopes of the future. The lizard was teaching her to welcome life’s darkness as well as its light.
Her patience was infinite. As was Albert’s. Could Gordon sustain his own?
Then, one of the salamander’s forelegs moved forward. Hesitated. The other moved. Quickly, all four flashed as it scrambled past perceived danger.
Mattie was quicker. Her hand shot out. The captured salamander wriggled wildly. Without conscious thought, she rendered up a traditional Indian blessing. “Thank you, Lizard, for sharing yourself with us, that both you and we may live on.”
“Sonofabitch, Mother!” Albert said, coming forward.
“Albert, please.”
His full lower lip thrust out. “You say—”
She cut him off. “When you’re an adult you may say what you bloody well please.” She turned to Gordon. “Would ye say a light repast is in order?”
He swallowed and looked at the salamander, then at her. Repugnance was reflected in that brutish face.
“You need to eat, Mr. Halpern. Or you won’t get where you be wanting to go,” she added as an ominous but truthful inducement.
His normally deep voice became a croak. “We eat it raw?”
“Oh, I should hope not. I have, mind ye. But I never got used to it. Albert, would ye mind starting a fire?”
“A fire?” Gordon glanced around at the treeless plain. “You’re joking.”
Her sullen son was already collecting the desert debris: slivers of mesquite and cottonwood along with tufts of dry beargrass washed down from the foothills, clumps of withered cacti, a scattering of seeds, a small pile of antelope droppings.
She set Gordon to lining a depression in the sand with small stones. Meanwhile, she took her knife and dispatched the salamander. Gordon watched, half-fascinated, half-repelled.
To her dismay, she had no matches left in her moccasin folds. Resorting to the primitive method, she knelt and, using her knife, fashioned a round, hard stick of wood.
“Let me, Mother.”
She peered up into the face of a boy determined to be a man. Without a word, she ceded him the wood.
He twirled it between his palms. The rounded end bore into a cup-shaped hollow made in a flat, softer piece of wood Albert had collected. The trick was in cutting a little notch in the end of the round stick, so that the friction quickly generated heat to cause the softer piece to smolder.
Soon, little wood shavings glowed. He blew upon them, and they burst into a small flame. At that, he was ready to add a little heap of dry materials. He sat back on his haunches, pleased with himself.
Mattie was pleased for him. So little opportunity existed in the confines of the fort to prove himself a man in the way of his Indian forebears. He rose to his feet, his head coming no higher than her chin, and actually smiled up at her. So long since she had seen that boyish smile.
When Gordon had hauled him back to the mine shaft, Albert had been afraid. Anyone else would have seen in the child’s face features as impassive as an Olmec statue, but in the depths of his black eyes she had seen a fear that had beat at his throat like the small wings of a hummingbird. He had been almost joyful to be reunited with her, if the way his grubby little hand tightened in hers was any indication.
She had tried to explain to him why she was with Gordon Halpern. That he was financing the trip in order to recover his wife, that the woman was apparently with Albert’s father, that Mattie herself had contracted to help so that she could look for him, that their horses had stampeded in the sandstorm . . . .
But Albert had heard only two words. His father. After that, he had been almost compliant. Almost. She doubted her son would ever be the perfectly biddable child.
Quickly, she skewered the lifeless salamander. While it roasted on a spit of sorts, she and Gordon and Albert sucked dry the juice of the agave stalks. The pulpy head of the mescal-agave was cooking slowly in the stone pit. She nodded at it and said, “The agave tastes sweet, like the heart of artichoke. And it’s nutritious.”
“Yeah,” Gordon said. “And the salamander tastes like chicken, I bet.”
She laughed and saw that her laughter took him by surprise. Even her son, startled, glanced up at her. Solemnly, he wiped his sticky fingers on his calico shirt. “Tastes like shit.”
“Albert!”
This time, Gordon was the one who laughed. “Now, if only we had a good red wine. A fine claret of Bordeaux . . . ’69, I should say.”
He was being facetious, but she responded quite seriously. “Oh, no. With the salamander, I would suggest a white wine. At the most a light-to medium-flavored red wine. I would prefer a white burgundy such as Le Montrachet or Corton Charlemagne.”
Gordon narrowed his eyes. “Who are you? Really?”
She shrugged. “I am what ye see, what ye drew on your pad.”
“That and more, I suspect.”
She squatted before the salamander. Its juices dropped into the fire and sizzled. “I am the granddaughter of a Highland earl.” She sliced away a portion of the cooked salamander and passed it, knife-tip, to Gordon. “Sir Colin Campbell, Lord of Glenorchy, Earl of Badenoch, and Thane of Cawdor.” Her mouth curled with her sarcasm. “Difficult to imagine, isn’t it?” For her, what was even more difficult to imagine was the home of her childhood. Had it all been a fantasy? A castle carved of rose-colored stone; its facade draped in ivy, looking like a lace mantilla.
Gordon removed the sliver of seared meat and bit into it. Mouth full, he asked, “Can’t you return to Scotland? Aren’t any of your family left back there?”
She passed a piece of the meat to Albert, who immediately popped it into his mouth. “Aye, the family who supported the Hanovers in 1745. Me father’s side supported the Jacobites and Bonnie Prince Charlie.”
She tilted her head and eyed the man. “Take a look at me, Mr. Halpern.” With the back of her sleeve she wiped a droplet of the salamander’s fatty grease from her chin. “Do ye really think any of the Campbell clan would want to lay claim to me as a relative of theirs? Much less Albert here?” She motioned to her son, who was tearing at his meat like some prehistoric primate.
To Gordon’s credit, he did not lie or try to flatter her. “The Old World aristocracy, eh?” He shook his head, and the sunlight glinted off his earring. “Too often we trade our souls to try and measure up to their yardstick o
f propriety.”
She passed around the last of the meat, saying, “Albert is bright.” She felt more than saw her son’s attention shift from his food to her. “Me only hope is that he learns to adapt.”
“The world’s only hope,” Halpern said, “are people like Albert, who can combine the best of his two worlds and discard the rest.”
Still eating, Albert eyed Gordon. His disdain toward the Easterner had been obvious to her. Only now, she caught a glimpse of her son’s reluctant willingness to view other aspects of the man.
“By me estimation, I think by nightfall we should reach the foothills of the Huachineras.”
He flexed his scarred fingers. Powerful fingers. “I want to reach Bingham.”
She grinned. “Ye want to box his ears?”
He gave her an amused glance. “Hell, no. I want to sketch. I want my pad and pastels back.”
“And I want me jar of cream back. And Pepper.” Her Indian pony was loyal and loving, and did not care if she smelled like gardenias or cow dung. Pepper asked nothing more from her than a gentle hand.
The sun was edging toward the western half of the sky. Mattie wanted nothing more than to sit where she was. Yet the longer they sat the less chance they had of catching up with either their mounts or Bingham or both.
She scooped sand onto the fire, then rose and stretched the kinks from her legs and arms. At that moment she happened to glance down. Gordon was staring at her with a fiery look in his eyes. It was as if he had just realized she was a woman.
At once, her outstretched arms dropped to her sides. She had forgotten she was a woman.
Just as quickly, Gordon came to his feet. “Let’s get started then.”
Albert, ever mindful of man and earth being brothers, restored the area as it had been before their presence had disturbed it.
Then they walked again, placing one foot in front of another. She noted that her moccasins were wearing thin. She also noted things that were not as obvious.
Where previously she had concentrated on survival, she now had the dangerous diversion of Gordon Halpern to contemplate. He was but a mere man. And a man who was worthless in terms of survival. A man who had abandoned a chance at finding the horses in order to rescue her son.
She cast him a sidewise glance. His profile looked as powerful as his hands. Was his temper as powerful? The thought made her inwardly shrink. As an adult, her relationships with the male sex had not been satisfying.
Discounting Albert, of course. Living with her son in virtual ostracism, she had gradually learned that the male was as vulnerable as the female.
For all his taciturnity, his inexpressiveness, Albert was hurt, she knew, by the rejection of kids his age. The sting of their taunts was worse than the sting of their fisticuffs when several boys would gang up on him. One on one, he could lick the toughest of the youths. Yet that didn’t bring him friends. In fact, his disdain for all that was white only alienated him more from society at the post.
He couldn’t see that his mother was white, and that he was half-white himself. She ached to comfort him, but her words would not heal him. He would have to heal himself.
Gradually, the sand hills yielded to rocky inclines and slopes peppered with stunted mesquite and spindly willow that indicated a presence of water. Eagerly, Albert pushed on ahead. Mattie kept his little silhouette in sight, although she didn’t think he would attempt to flee again, not when they shared the same goal: Nantez.
He was the first to find a creek bed. “Mama!” he called and pointed proudly. Water surfaced at intervals just barely above the alluvial gravel.
Her pace and Gordon’s became much more ambitious. Amid the bracken fringing the water, she fell sprawled on her stomach. She didn’t know which to be more thankful for—the shade or the water.
A voice behind her cut short her elation. “Manos arriba!”
Cursing beneath her breath, she whirled.
Gordon didn’t keep his curses beneath his. “God damn, what the—”
Three Mexicans stood with rifles leveled at her, Gordon, and Albert. The three mustachioed men wore the gray-brown uniforms of the Sixth Mexican Infantry and bandoleros crisscrossed their chests. “Ahh, Americanos?” one said, the slimmest of the trio.
Gordon lowered his hands. “We have lost our way, sergeant.”
“Put your hands up, my friend,” the same Mexican said. “How do we know you are not bandidos, eh?”
“Come on, sergeant. Do we look like—”
The captain jerked the point of his bayoneted rifle in the direction of Albert. “Indio?”
Fright squeezed Mattie’s heart. The inimical tension between the Mexican and the Indian was unsurpassed. She stepped in front of Albert. “My son. Mi hijo.” Next to the sergeant, a soldier almost as round as he was tall grinned. A gold tooth gleamed. “The woman beds down with the Indian? Maybe she should see what a Mexican has between his legs.”
She had learned to show no fear. “A worm. Am I not right, gordo?” She taunted him by using the Spanish word for fat. The Apaches had not been reticent about showing their genitals, and it had been her experience that the fatter the male, the smaller his genital. “Do you have a big snake, eh?”
The sergeant chuckled. The other Mexican soldier slapped his fat friend’s back and guffawed. “Show her your snake, Diego!”
Diego’s swarthy skin took on a red undertone. “Si, I will show her what a real man is.”
He took a step toward her, but the sergeant said, “No. I outrank you. Come with me, señora. Mine is not a worm, I assure you.”
“She stays with us,” Halpern said, putting a restraining hand on her forearm.
As if she would go with the officer. If she did anything, it would be to turn and run. Her heart was beating so hard. Here it was, beginning all over again. That helplessness. Where the woman had to submit. If even one more time she had to make her mind blank . . . to leave her body . . . .
Albert understood the implication of what was going on. He grabbed her other arm and clung to it.
That was what lent her immediate courage. Had she not endured his father’s sexual assault and lived to enjoy things that others took for granted? Like sunlight on her face? The sound of bird songs? Her son’s small hand? A warm bath?
Their lives were worth far more than that submission of the body. Her soul was far stronger than any physical infliction. She shook off the hand at either side of her. The man’s hand, the child’s hand. “I will be back, soon.”
She turned toward the Mexican officer. “Sergeant? I prefer privacy, if ye don’t mind.”
His handlebar mustache lifted with his grin. “But that is part of the sport. Spectators, entiendes?”
Yes, she understood. But she would hurl her body against the bayonet before she would acquiesce to her son’s watching the officer rape her. Her heart hurt for Albert. Why must his spirit be bruised and battered over and over again? Was there no respite?
The sergeant passed his rifle to the fat soldier and began removing his holster. “La blusa, señora.”
She didn’t move at the order to take off her blouse.
The captain grinned. “Your son will find the bayonet a painful way to die.”
The fat soldier took the hint and nudged Albert’s stomach with the bayonet’s tip. She saw the boy tense, as if to spring forward like some mountain cat.
Her hand flew to her shirtwaist’s looped buttons that ran upward to her small, lace collar, dirty and torn. Her fingers fumbled.
All three soldiers laughed. From the corner of her eye, she saw Gordon’s hand draw back into a fist.
“Don’t try that, señor” the sergeant warned him with a congenial smile.
What in God’s name did Gordon think he could do? He was as helpless as she and her son.
She often thought that being helpless had to be so much worse on a man, who was oriented toward action and aggressiveness. A woman was trained to accept pain from the onset of her first monthly through t
he birth of children and the eventual loss of her monthlies.
All this she thought as she pulled the calico shirtwaist up over her rib cage, over her head, and—
Something exploded. A gun shot! “Sonofabitch!” she yelled. She couldn’t see. “What—”
Gordon grabbed her arm. “Duck!”
She was jerked to her knees. Gravel abraded her flesh above her prized muslin chemise. She had decorated the muslin with Ayrshire embroidery, that small eyelet, needlepoint type made famous by her Scots forebears.
On her other side, Albert crouched, as if both seeking protection and protecting her. Above her, she could hear one of the Mexicans pleading. “Señor, por favor, lo siento—”
“Well, well. If it isn’t the harlot with her wares displayed.”
That voice! She tugged the blouse back down and struggled to her feet. “Sonofabitch! ’Tis Bingham.”
Beneath the big, floppy black hat, his answering grin briefly parted his beard. He was eyeing her with desire. “Yours truly, gal. The Lord God Almighty has sent me to make certain you tempt no more men.”
“I wouldn’t call ye an angel of mercy, Bingham, but ye sure—”
“Bingham, watch what you’re doing!” Gordon nudged the preacher’s Springfield rifle back toward the two Mexican soldiers left standing.
Only then did Mattie notice the man crumpled on the ground with a bullet hole through his forehead. She put her arm around Albert’s shoulder, perhaps more to steady herself than to insulate him from a sight with which he was certainly familiar.
“God’s wrath,” Bingham said and spit a wad of tobacco juice into the gravel.
“God’s wrath will be mild compared to mine, Bingham, if you have spent my money.”
“The gal’s lucky I happened upon the sight.”
“Tell the two soldiers to drop their pants,” Gordon told her.
“Quitenselos!” she said. “Quitense los pantalones!”
Quickly, almost comically, the two men lowered their trousers around their ankles.
“It is a worm,” Albert affirmed in an adult’s judicious voice.
Tame the Wildest Heart Page 8