Tame the Wildest Heart

by Parris Afton Bonds

  “Home?” came the muffled whisper.

  “Aye. Home.”

  That single word, home, seemed to have the power to make the woman cooperate. She rose and let Mattie take her hand. Like a sleepwalker, she permitted Mattie to draw her toward the door.

  Mattie spared a departing glance for Esqueda who snored gently in oblivious slumber. Or did the old Mexican woman actually wink at her as she turned back toward the doorway?

  Outside, the rancheria was quiet. A few campfires smoldered. Dogs dozed. To move among the wickiups unchallenged, she knew, would be relatively easy. To slip past guards stationed outside the camp’s perimeters would be more difficult. She had no knowledge of where they were posted.

  A cold half-moon lit the way for her. Using all her past experience with the Apaches, she slipped through the underbrush. She was careful where she placed her feet, and she gingerly moved limbs from her path and replaced them. She imagined herself gliding like a snake—the Indian symbol of rebirth and new life. Diana and Gordon followed in the trail she forged.

  Always, her eyes scanned their field of vision, peering through the moonlit night for shapes and forms alien to the landscape. Mist curled up from the ground and wreathed around the trees like serpents.

  Her ears listened for sounds not in keeping with the forest or those that were native to the forest, but might be coming at an inappropriate hour. A night bird’s call. She stilled, tensed. After all these years, it was so difficult to recall what was natural wildlife and what were Apache tricks.

  Resuming her steps, she kept her pace steady and slow, so that the urge for flight did not turn into a disastrous, blind running.

  The density of trees thinned. Gradually, solid rock replaced soft soil and vegetation. She began to breathe easier. No call to halt. No sudden shaft and sudden pain between the unprotected shoulder blades.

  She sensed they were nearing the canyon rim. How to find the path back down in that darkness where moonlight was deceptive? Yawning chasms waiting to swallow up their bodies at one misstep.

  The shale beneath her foot began to slope. She had more a sense, a subtle feeling, than any substantial evidence of the ravenous rim just beyond mortal sight, aided by moonlight.

  Then even that small concession by luck was with-drawn as Stygian clouds smothered the silver crescent. Her steps slowed even further. Rocks slid away and their sounds echoed. Then there was silence.

  Her palm sweated. Diana’s was dry and cool.

  Time was pressuring her to hurry. Instead, she sat down, tugging Diana with her. Behind them, Gordon did likewise. Mattie slowly began to edge forward. That terrible fear of the unknown was magnified a thousand times in the thundering beat of her heart against her ribcage and the pounding of her pulse against her eardrums.

  One heel encountered space. She froze and sucked in her breath.

  Diana pushed against her.

  “Stop!” she told the woman.

  Diana nudged her again.

  She slid, maybe a yard or so. Diana slid with her. Then her feet jammed up against something solid. A boulder.

  Diana laughed.

  Mattie’s fear was like an acid, corroding her veins and bones. Feeling her way around the boulder’s pitted surface, she veered off to her right. Despite the night’s coolness, perspiration dotted her forehead and saturated her armpits. She could smell the odors of pine and cedar mixed with the odor of her fear. Did Gordon realize how precarious were their positions? Literally precarious?

  Again, her foot struck emptiness. At once, she flung herself backward. Her spine collided with Diana’s knee. The impact must have frightened Diana. The woman started flailing her fists against her. “No! No! Don’t! Stop hurting me!”

  Mattie warded off the woman’s blows. Felt herself sliding. Her feet scrambled for a toe-hold and encountered slippery shale. She was going over the edge!

  Her hands grabbed only the air. She was falling.

  How far she fell, rolled, tumbled, bounced was all a blur. She must have come to a stop on a plateau of sorts. The air was knocked from her. She felt bruised. Only Nantez had ever battered her this badly.

  She tried sitting up, but the hand on which she braced her weight plunged on downward. Dias muire! She must be on a ledge!

  Suddenly, the moon blasted away the clouds and revealed the precipice spread before her. She was perched on a stob of rock not much wider than a table. Below and beyond, the white-rapids river coursed through the canyon like a thin stream of spilt milk.

  “Mattie!”

  It was Gordon’s voice. With motion she could ill afford, she turned her head to look back. He stood off to her right, on the rim’s edge. Diana was backing off. The woman was going to run back to the Apache camp!

  “Mattie, look down,” he called.

  “Are ye daft?”

  “Behind you. See the ridge?”

  Carefully, she peered over the edge. Indeed, a bridge of rock, mere inches beneath the one on which she sat, connected the stob with the canyon wall. The upward slope of the bridge had slowed the momentum of her tumbling so that she had not rolled on over the table’s edge.

  Obviously, her guardian angel hadn’t slept through this particular peril.

  Cautiously, she swiveled her body around to face the rim and Gordon. She lowered her feet over the edge of the table top until they touched rock. She could not bring herself to stand, to cross the natural bridge upright, although it was more than a yard’s width.

  On all fours, she crawled forward. Her hands knotted on tufts on grass, as if they could support her weight should she lose her balance. It was absurd. She grinned and started to chuckle. She was midway across the bridge.

  “What in the hell are you doing, Mattie?”

  “Celebrating precious life!” She continued crawling, looking neither to her left nor right, but only down at the sandstone. An ant was her companion. It moved more quickly than she. Who ever said ants were slow?

  At last, she reached the canyon wall. Drawing a fortifying breath, she looked up. And up. Stair-step ledges appeared to offer handholds and even areas wide enough to gallop a horse. But the distance between many of them looked higher than she could reach.

  No wonder she had felt battered from the fall. She must have hit every ledge.

  “Can you find footholds?” Gordon called.

  She shook her head. “No.” She was trapped!

  “Shit!” Gordon cried out.

  “What?”

  He pointed off to his right, then grabbed Diana and tugged her behind him as he ran along the rim’s edge.

  Mattie looked off toward the direction he was pointing. O’Neil! He was taking aim with his rifle. Sonofabitch!

  “O’Neil!” she yelled.

  Caught off guard, he swiveled in the direction of the shout. The muzzle of his rifle found her. She flung herself flat against the canyon wall. A ping and a puff of dust half-a-dozen feet ahead of her. Then another scarcely a yard from her.

  Just grand. Now the moon had to shine!

  Cautiously, she leaned her head forward to peer up at him. A whiz of wind ruffled her hair, and rock crumbled from the wall just past her head.

  The dust cleared—and she saw in that direction what she had not noticed before. The ledge she was on narrowed, but continued to parallel the upper rim in a slope spiraling in a gradual descent. She began to edge along this foot-wide lip of rock. Glue could not have stuck closer to the canyon wall. Its plunging drop-off revealed a breath-sucking view of a grizzly death.

  More shots zinged around her. Grit stung one eye. Then, mercifully, a cloud absorbed the moonlight.

  Or, perhaps, not so mercifully. One misstep . . . .

  She had to force herself to take a step. Test the rock beneath. Would it support her weight? Then another step. And another.

  Why hadn’t she stayed in Tucson!

  Because Albert had run away.

  Because of that paradoxical man called Gordon.

  Because she would
not have missed this adventure even if at this very second her next step meant plummeting two-hundred feet.

  Or, at least, that’s what she told herself as encouragement for each successive step she took.

  From somewhere, she heard thudding sounds, a muffled scream, a clattering. With the canyon’s echo it was difficult to tell the direction exactly. Gordon? Diana?

  Then, she heard the scuffling of gravel underfoot coming from somewhere, not more than ten or fifteen feet above her. The ledge and the rim must be converging. Then came a man’s distinctive grunt.

  Which direction was O’Neil going? She could wait, but if the moon came out from behind the clouds, she would be totally exposed. Better to move on. Listening intently, she scooted along the ledge. Now, the canyon wall she had plastered her back to was no higher than her hips.

  Too late, she heard the rustling steps, the heavy breathing—and collided with him. A single hand grabbed hold of her forearm. She tried to yank free, but its grip was stronger.

  “Mattie?”

  “Gordon?” She could make out his face now.

  “Let me go, please. Please.” That was Diana’s low, pleading voice.

  “O’Neil’s out there somewhere,” Mattie told him.

  He released her forearm and said wryly, “I thought that was the Archangel.”

  “More like the Angel of Death. Let’s keep moving. I’m fairly certain this be the trail we came up.”

  Moving in the mist and darkness meant proceeding at a snail’s pace for the three. Diana’s docile demeanor was a blessing. Gravel rumbled underfoot. If the noise was echoed any distance, the same was not true of O’Neil; that is, if he made any noise.

  Occasionally, the moon peeked from behind its black-cloud mask, and Mattie was given a glimpse of the steep slopes and treacherous maze of switchbacks awaiting them. Still, she was also assured that they drew ever closer to the bottom.

  Of O’Neil’s whereabouts, she could only guess.

  The confirmation to her guess came forty-five minutes later, when they reached the canyon’s bottom. By that time the moon had made up its mind to light the landscape. They found their mounts where they had left them, and then they found O’Neil. He had fallen onto his back from a precipice above, and his eyes now stared up at the moon lifelessly.

  Mattie led the way out the canyon. She tried not to think of the couple riding double behind her. Might as well tell herself not to breathe. The woman cradled in Gordon’s arms was the woman Mattie wanted to be. Where she wanted to be.

  Now Gordon had what he wanted.

  And she? Well, she could claim her fifteen hundred dollars once she reached Tucson. Was it that damned important? Would it change who she was? Who she was now? Would it really make Albert’s life any better?

  She doubted it. At least, that was what she wanted to believe. That she could ride away now. Leave Gordon and his woman to their own resources. And damn the money.

  § CHAPTER SIXTEEN §

  When William Bingham opened his eyes, he beheld Hell on Earth. The face of his nemesis was in the guise of a woman this time, but an Indian all the same. The same fierce visage: skin as dried as October’s cornhusks. A grin like a knife-happy artiste. Slanted eyes full of both fiendishness and ignorance at once.

  He shrank back onto the straw pallet. “Get thee from me, Satan.”

  She thrust a wooden cup at him.

  Poison? The blood of a sacrificial victim?

  She nodded enthusiastically, indicating he should drink.

  He peered dubiously into the cup. A dark, amber liquid swirled inside. He was thirsty. Tentatively, he sipped the concoction. He gasped. “Wine!” He sipped again. By God, it was a fortified wine. As good as any sherry or port, but definitely a home brew.

  Later that day, using Spanish, he was able to communicate to the witch his desire to see the source of this nectar.

  Again, that enthusiastic nod.

  He was weaker than he thought. It took the assistance of both the Indian woman and the half-breed kid to get him off the earthen floor and to the hovel’s crumbling doorway. He shook off their hands. The filthy hands of savages. “I can walk alone.”

  On legs weakened by two days of disuse, he followed Liliana over a stone-laid path that challenged his ankles. Tentacled, spiny cactus looking like some wild nightmare bordered the trail.

  At the first pebbly incline, he almost slipped. The half-breed caught his elbow. William acknowledged the act with a brisk nod, the closest he could bring himself to expressing graciousness to the boy. After all, his birth wasn’t his fault.

  Then William looked out over a valley. On one side, high upon a slope that had the best exposure to the sunshine, was planted a vineyard. Large bunches of grapes were trained on crude pergolas.

  The Tarahumara men were already harvesting the grapes into large, two-handled baskets. The women, looking like a string of ants, held the baskets on their heads and climbed the hill to disappear over the other side.

  “Come!” Liliana took his hand. “Walk.”

  He allowed her to lead him back up the path. But at the top, instead of returning to her house, she took another trail.

  The trail came out at the ruins of the Jesuit mission. It had been built more like a fortress with stone-block rooms several feet thick. Now wildflowers and cactus grew in tumbled piles of stone that were once part of the wall next to the church.

  Liliana passed under an ivy-draped stone arch and entered the church through a tile-faced doorway. They were in the north transept. Here, it was dark and cool.

  Instead of going into the chancel, she led him and Albert on down a stone stairway worn by the passage of millions of feet, then into a cavernous room lit by torchlight.

  Slowly, William’s senses adjusted. First, he heard the sound of a reed flute, coming from another room. Then, he smelled the strange odor. At once, he identified it as peyote. The Tarahumaras held it in high regard, believing that it possessed the power to cure.

  Lastly, he beheld a stone figure and recognized it as Chacmol, a heavenly messenger. It was said these people came from a culture far more advanced than even that of Cortez and his conquistadors, but he doubted this seriously. “A blasphemy!” he muttered.

  Liliana took his arm and pointed at the darkened corner. There, perched on shelf after shelf, was a cache of raffia covered bottles. “Vino,” she said. “Para la comunión.”

  He shook off her hand and strode from the place of defilement and up the stairs like a man pursued by thirty demons. At the top, his recovering injury caught up with him, forced him to pause for breath and fight back the pain.

  Ahead of him was the chancel. A portion of the caved-in roof emitted a waterfall of sunlight. A pepper tree flourished where once had been the high altar.

  A burro chomped placidly at shoots of grass thrusting up from between the floor’s broken tiles. The animal, its hooves clattering against the tiles, wandered closer to the pulpit in search of greener pastures.

  Then William noticed the crude twelve-foot wooden crucifix behind the pulpit. Honey-gold rays of sunlight haloed the oaken Cross of Christ, which was carved with distinctly Indian features.

  As he watched, a dozen or so Tarahumaras came and went, genuflecting, kneeling, lighting candles, leaving offerings of flower, corn, wine.

  William stomped toward the pulpit and waved his arms, as if to scatter them like cattle. “You defile the Lord God Almighty!”

  Worship ceased. The Indians whispered, “A crazed man.” They fell back from his path.

  At that point, the strangest thing happened. As he approached the pulpit, blood began to dribble from the wound at the crucifix’s wooden feet.

  Liliana’s eyes were wise with the knowledge of the ancients.

  * * *

  Albert observed the long face of the man across from him, who studied the cards he held. A stupid man, this Bingham. He believed his white man’s God would save him. Could he not see that the bleeding crucifix was, most likely, no
thing more than wine spilt from one of the wine bottles?

  “Five beans,” Bingham said.

  A stupid man. The eyes looked off, away from the five cards in his hand. He did not have anything. His God would not save him from Nantez.

  “I call.” Albert knew that his father, when he knew that his son was in the area, would track him down. Would kill whoever stood in the way.

  This worried Albert. He didn’t want his mother killed. But she was a woman. She still thought of him as her little boy. She couldn’t understand that it was time for him to be a man.

  Bingham’s smile was serene. He spread his cards fanlike on the pigskin table. “Three queens, son.” Albert stared down at the cards, then up at the white man. “You lied. You said you had never played stud poker.”

  “No. I said I don’t play the game.”

  He shook his head. “You hide behind words. A white coward.” He shoved the beans at the man. His words were like shadows. Appearing, disappearing, reappearing. Without meaning.

  Bingham was a coyote man. Furred face and hands, pointed ears, and eyes that shifted endlessly from side to side. A clever animal, this coyote.

  But not as clever as Albert’s father. His father would hunt, trap, and skin this coyote for sport.

  He had been waiting for his father for four years now. Waiting for him to come for him, as this white man’s god was supposed to come for his son, this Bingham. Stupid man. How could this god help his son when the god did not believe in fighting back? Nantez would fight for his son.

  Those shifting eyes glittered. “Whatever you’re thinking, son, you don’t even know half of anything. Understand? Life is an illusion. Like desert mirages. When you’re half-way across life’s desert, you find out that black is white, shadow is really light, wrong is right and that you’ve been a fool most of your life. If not all of it.”

  More words. He shoved out another bean for an ante. Stupid coyote man. Now he would trap this animal at his own game. Albert dealt the hand.

  * * *