Tame the Wildest Heart

by Parris Afton Bonds

  He drew a steadying breath. “Now what?”

  She bit her lower lip while she thought. “Nantez is so unpredictable.”

  His breath expelled in a snort. “The entire Apache nation is unpredictable.”

  “I say we keep riding, casually. We might have the element of surprise.”

  “And if they’ve spotted us?”

  “If they’ve spotted us, Gordon, there is nowhere we can run to.” Just saying so made her scalp tighten. Now what, indeed? She had brought Gordon this far. Now how would they get Diana out of Nantez’s camp? Alive. All three of them.

  They rode through the deepening dusk. Neither of them spoke. She doubted if she had the voice required to do so. Her skin prickled.

  Off to her left, a covey of white wing exploded from the brush, and her horse shied. When she regained control, she snapped, “I ask ye now, what am I doing? I have to be crazy, trying to rescue the wife of the bloke I love meself. Not to mention returning to the same vicinity as Nantez.”

  He hauled up on his reins. “What are you doing, you ask? You are doing what you have to.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says a bloke who thinks there is a phoenix waiting to take flight from your sack of ashes.”

  “Ye must have a wee bit of the Irish blarney in ye, Gordon.” Still, she felt pleasure at his remark.

  By the failing light, she spotted a score or so of horses tethered along the river bank. Two or three whinnied and nickered as she and Gordon rode nearer.

  He asked in a lowered voice, “Then we’re near the Netdahe camp?”

  She shook her head. “No. It’s an old trick. Apaches drive their horses and mules a couple of miles farther down river and tether them there. Then the band packs everything on its back, climbs up the mountainside to a summit and makes camp there. If an enemy is trailing, he would spot the trail of the animals and would not notice the camp. By such measures, Nantez escapes surprise visits.”

  When they had gone a couple of miles without incident, she began to hope that they were undetected. Though why Nantez’s guards should be so lax troubled her. A mountain lion’s screech left her even more unsettled.

  She was looking for an easily accessible pass to a higher plateau. Her gaze scanned the smooth canyon wall on the opposite bank until she sighted what she had half-remembered—a slightly irregular staircase carved by nature into the limestone wall. “We leave our horses here,” she told Gordon.

  After tethering their own mounts, she started climbing. Gordon fell in behind her, and she knew the length of her legs above her moccasins was often exposed. They ascended the wall with a minimum amount of noise. Occasionally, a loosened pebble would clatter down the steps behind them. Or her rifle, strapped to her back, would thud against stone.

  She stretched for foot-and handholds, scraped her fingers, lost her breath—and kept climbing.

  A good ten minutes passed before she could see treetops. She heard the noises before she saw the fire’s glow. Then she knew why she and Gordon had so easily approached the Netdahe camp. A ceremony was in progress. Not any ceremony, such as a war raid. But one so special that all else stops.

  She remembered once before, when, in midflight from a troop of Mexican cavalry, one of the Apache girls had reached her womanhood. The warriors had separated from the women and children and older people, who had taken refuge behind a hill.

  Right away, the girl’s parents had arranged the traditional ceremony in her honor, even while the shooting was heard on the other side of the hill. The coming of age, marking the time when a girl was ready for marriage, was one of the most important events in a girl’s life. The girls all looked forward to it eagerly. So the ceremony was never neglected, not even at a dangerous time like that.

  That same ceremony was underway now. The sun had set beyond the spiraling tops of firs and pines, and the air was very cold. Before an open-sided lodge stood an old woman who was conducting the ceremony. She had spread out a blanket and was marking four footprints that led away maybe fifty yards toward a single eagle feather placed on the ground.

  A girl still plump with baby fat was stretched out face down on the blanket. She was the candidate for the womanhood ceremony. Her dress was of the finest buckskin, decorated with small tin jingles and beadwork. Her long braids were laced with strings of colorful beads and tiny shells.

  The old woman had returned to the blanket to perform a kind of high-pitched incantation over the spread-eagled girl. Behind the old woman were the girl’s excited parents and an old man with a hawk face and fierce, kindly eyes. He had to be the sponsor—a close friend of the family. He jingled a rattle made of the hoofs of a fawn.

  Mattie recognized the old woman as Ponchie, one of Nantez’s wives. Ponchie’s unpredictable and mercurial wrath had made Mattie’s life in Nantez’s household a living nightmare. The old man was one of the Apache’s legendary men, Ramos, the tribal shaman.

  Gordon crept closer, crouching in briar and brush that rimmed the camp. Beside him, Mattie scanned the Indians crowded in a circle around the ceremony’s principal characters. Her blood congealed at the sight of Nantez, standing with other warriors. He was shorter, thicker, and uglier than she had even remembered.

  His scrawny legs had an agility that matched any of his warriors. His eyes blazed with impatience, intolerance, and cunning. His hair, black, thick, and very coarse, was bound by a folded, red flannel band before it fell to his powerful shoulders.

  Her eye sockets ached with the hate she felt when looking at him. The memory of being stabbed with his putrid flesh-sword burned in her brain. Another memory flashed before her: of trimming the hair at his forehead straight across at the level of his eyebrows. How many times she had been tempted to stab out his eyes! Only fear of the consequences at the hands of the tribe had kept her hand steady.

  Gordon gasped. “Diana!”

  Mattie followed the direction of his gaze toward the collection of wickiups. The tribe’s women were clustered there, and Gordon’s wife stood in their midst. She was taller than the rest, and easily singled out because of her silver-blond hair and extraordinarily light-colored eyes. Green or blue, Mattie couldn’t tell from that distance. Looking refined and above the squalor surrounding her, Diana appeared to be unharmed and none the worse for being held captive for six weeks.

  Upon seeing her Mattie felt jealousy, envy, instant dislike. All these powerful emotions thrust everything else from her mind. Here was Gordon’s beloved. Not only had she survived, but she was unchanged by the experience. She was everything Mattie might have been.

  Mattie felt her jaws tightening and forced herself to take several deep, restorative breaths. Now was not the time to lose control.

  The girl being initiated into womanhood stood up and stepped successively in each of the footprints leading to the feather, which she then circled, picked up, and brought back it to the starting point at the blanket. Meanwhile, all the crowd watched closely.

  This was a good time, in Mattie’s opinion, to circle around to the far side, where the squaws and Diana stood. She signaled to Gordon to follow her and then moved past him, treading carefully, taking care not to disturb any branches.

  Apache eyes were sharp. At points where the under-brush grew sparsely, she tracked a wider perimeter to seek concealment.

  The drummers started up with a constant beat of their tom-toms. This was a sign for the second part of the ceremony to start: feasting and dancing, which could last as long as four days and nights.

  Mattie knew that after the fire dance, everyone would join in a circle facing the fire, when the girl being honored would take a leading part in the dancing. During this diversion would be the time to extract Diana from the rest of the women. The problem was that before that part of the ceremony commenced two or three days might elapse.

  From their vantage point behind the wickiups, she and Gordon watched the fire dance. Male volunteers, known as devil dancers, were dressed in the skins of animals. The dancers perfo
rmed a series of intricate steps that consisted of moving sideways, north and south, rising alternately on toes and heels.

  Mattie noticed that the men not dancing were passing around bottles, most likely tiswin, corn whiskey. Good. She could almost count on Nantez drinking enough to pass out. His propensity for drinking often impaired his judgment at critical times. This had been the biggest obstacle to his becoming a prominent Apache war chief, which was never a hereditary position.

  Little by little, Mattie worked her way closer to the squaws, with Gordon following not far behind. As close as she dared get, she squatted on her heels, prepared to keep a night-long vigil.

  He hunkered just behind her, so near she could feel his breath on her neck. She could only hope he had the patience now required of them. They had come so far, braved so many dangers.

  No more than half an hour passed when, by good fortune, some of the women joined the dancing. The time was ripe for rescuing Diana.

  But it also boded ominously for Mattie’s plan because it meant that Nantez was not planning on staying long in that location. She had no way of knowing if he had selected the locale merely because it was a pleasant region in which to camp, with plenty of wood and water at hand; because it was a good rallying point and easy to defend; or because he was planning to go forth on another raid. If the latter were so, then he would not be caught unprepared for the chase.

  But at this point there could be no turning back. She looked over her shoulder at Gordon. “Wait here for me.”

  “What?” he mouthed in surprise.

  “Ye heard me.” Dressed as she was, in buckskin skirt, she might be able to mingle with the score or so of women at the rear of the group; might be able to draw close enough to talk to Diana.

  Gordon started to stand and she put her hand on his shoulder. “No,” she whispered. “I’ll be back with your Diana.”

  She thrust her rifle at him for safekeeping. Head lowered, she stepped into the peripheral group of women watching the festivities. Diana was only two or three women away from her.

  She edged closer. Now she was close enough to softly call her name. “Diana! Diana!”

  The woman turned her lovely face and looked around, puzzled. She hadn’t yet sighted Mattie, perhaps because Mattie was shorter than even the Indian women scattered around her.

  “Diana,” she called again. “I’m here to rescue you.” Diana noticed her then. She frowned, as if not quite trusting sight and sound. Her eyes were bright, like lurid, tropical flowers.

  “I’m with Gordon,” Mattie added.

  At that, Diana began screaming.

  § CHAPTER FOURTEEN §

  The Indian women backed away from Diana. She wouldn’t stop screaming. Not until Nantez approached her and backhanded her on her cheek. Then she staggered, blinked, and looked around her with the dazed glance of someone awakening to a bad dream.

  At the same time, Mattie heard rustling in the brush behind her. She half-turned to see Gordon shouldering his way into the clearing. His anger had clearly overridden his reason—and her warning. That anger contorted his features into a frightening grimace.

  Before he could aim Mattie’s rifle, two warriors pinned his arms and wrestled away both her rifle and his own.

  Nantez’s ferocious gaze swung from Diana to Mattie, then to Gordon. The subchiefs slow smile revealed something Mattie had forgotten, how his teeth were blackened at the gums. On those bandy legs, he strolled toward her and the captured Gordon. The entire camp was so quiet that the falling of a pine cone sounded like an explosion.

  Speaking in the Na-dene dialect of the Apache language, Nantez said, “You’ve come back. Where is my son?”

  “Where you’ll never find him,” Mattie said, speaking in the same language. She had spoken boldly, knowing that to show fear was a weakness Nantez preyed upon.

  Nantez raised his arm, as if he meant to strike her, and she flinched inwardly. Something else inside her reacted with an audible snarl.

  “Tell him I have come for Diana,” Gordon said.

  “Who is this?” Nantez asked before she could translate Gordon’s message.

  “He is the brother of the white woman you are holding captive. We have come for her.”

  Nantez’s grin grew broader. He glanced at Gordon, then back to her. “You plan to take her and just walk away. Just like that?”

  Granted, the plan was farfetched.

  “What did he say?” Gordon asked.

  Mattie felt like a hot potato being pitched back and forth. “He’s a bit amazed that we think we can walk in, take Diana, and walk out. Alive,” she added, in case Gordon didn’t get the gist of the remark.

  “So am I,” Gordon said dryly. “Amazed. Truly amazed.”

  “I have told Nantez that you are Diana’s brother— and me husband.” Might as well unload the bad news all at one time.

  “You what?”

  “Nantez will leave me alone if I am your wife. As long as you live, that is. Why dinna ye listen to me and stay put?”

  Impatient, Nantez gestured to Diana, who stood next to her. “Ask her if she wants to go,” he said.

  Mattie looked at her and in a calm voice repeated Nantez’s instruction in English.

  The woman was beautiful. Even in her disheveled state—her tawny hair mussed, the smudges beneath her eyes, the faint bruise across one of her classical cheekbones. Mattie noticed that she was a good half-foot taller than Nantez.

  Diana shook her head. “No,” she said in a mere whisper.

  “Your wife has said she doesn’t want to go with us,” Mattie relayed to Gordon.

  “For the love of God, Mattie, she’s afraid. Scared stiff.”

  “Of course, she is. But we have to have her cooperation if we’re going to get her out of here.”

  He started toward her, and she began screaming again.

  Once more, Nantez struck her. She crumpled to her knees. Then, smiling, he stared at Gordon.

  Gordon would have sprung at Nantez, but Mattie stepped between the two men and told Nantez, “We want to gamble for your captive, me husband’s sister.”

  Every Apache was a gambler. Man, woman, and child. And there was nothing they would not stake, from their horses to their shirts.

  Nantez’s wily black eyes lit up. “What do you have that I cannot take?”

  It was a good question. A great question. She needed a great answer.

  “What’s he saying now?” Gordon demanded. Only the greatest restraint kept him from pummeling the Indian.

  “I told him we want to gamble for Diana. He wants to know what our stake is?”

  “No wonder he’s smirking.”

  “Exactly.” She turned back to Nantez. With her eye on the masked Devil Dancers ringing Nantez, an idea came. “My husband is considered a great chief where he comes from. He will fight your best warrior for this woman here.”

  Nantez looked over Gordon in an appraising manner. “What’s going on now?” Gordon asked.

  “I told him you would fight his best warrior for Diana. The Apaches love wrestling matches.”

  “Good God, Mattie, I was a boxer, not a wrestler. There is a big difference! And what’s our stake to be?” She felt her heart turn to stone as she answered. “His son. Me son. Albert.”

  His eyes seemed to search hers. “You know what you are doing?”

  “I believe in ye. Ye stand to lose as much as meself. We both stand to lose our loved ones. That gives us an edge.”

  He looked down at his hands, knotted in veined fists. “Set it up then.”

  She turned back to Nantez and told him what her stake would be. “Tomorrow at noon?”

  A sly smile stretched his cruel lips. He motioned to one of the Devil Dancers. A big man, well over six feet and heavily muscled. “Martine. The man I choose to fight your husband tomorrow.”

  “I have no worry. Do you have a place for us to sleep tonight?”

  Her audacity must have impressed Nantez, because after surprise crossed
his face, he gave her a smug smile. “You and your man can sleep in the house of my wife’s mother.”

  At once, she knew the reason behind his smugness. His mother-in-law could observe her and Gordon. If they did not behave as man and wife . . . .

  Nantez signaled that the ceremony was to continue and ordered one of his men to accompany Mattie and Gordon to the wickiup of his mother-in-law, Esqueda.

  There was a banked fire in its center. In the dark recess of the wickiup, the old woman’s eyes peered across the red glow. She said nothing but only nodded, giving her blessing that the two “visitors” might enter.

  “You have gotten us into a hell of a mess,” Gordon said, settling his big frame on top of a rolled animal skin, a brown grizzly from the looks of it.

  “I?” She darted a glance at the old woman, then went to kneel before Gordon. With what she hoped was a loving smile, she began removing his boot. “Ye have gotten us into this bloody mess.”

  “What are you doing? Let go of my—”

  “I’m removing your boot as a good wife should. And I might remind ye that if ye’d stayed put as I instructed ye to do, then we wouldn’t be snared rabbits just waiting for Nantez’s knife. Now kiss me.”

  “What?”

  She began removing the other boot. “I said kiss me. Nantez’s mother-in-law is watching.”

  “If this is a trick, I swear, Mattie, I’ll—”

  “Hush.” Still on her knees, she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him gently but insistently.

  At first, he didn’t respond. She could feel his anger at her, and the situation, knotting every muscle in his big body. The steady pounding of the tom-tom outside didn’t make for serenity. Instead, it seemed to fill the little wickiup so that there was nothing else, not even the watchful eyes of old Esqueda. There was only the throbbing music that compelled the heart to keep tempo with it.

  Then Gordon’s arms came up around her waist. She leaned into him, so that he was totally supporting her weight. His kiss deepened. His tongue conveyed inside her mouth the message of his body’s desire. Excitement surged through her like a wind-whipped grass fire.