by Vella Munn
So she’d been forced into her role just as he had. That bound them together in a way that would last as long as they lived and surely was why he ran his fingers over her throat.
“I stand in awe of your courage, Morning Butterfly.”
• • •
“Will he follow you?” she asked Cougar, who’d helped her onto the mare he’d chosen for her to ride before mounting himself, his easy leap filled with confidence. “My horse, I mean. When yours walks, mine will do the same?”
“If you tell him to.”
She looked at the twitching ears ahead of her, then started when the creature shook its head to dislodge a fly. “How do I do that?”
“You did not watch the way the soldiers controlled their horses? I cannot believe you were not curious.”
“I was, but I tried to stay as far from the soldiers as possible.”
His features became grim at that, but he didn’t say anything, only waited as Drums No More walked his horse over to a rock and used that to help him climb onto the animal’s back.
Cougar could have boosted his grandfather up, but Morning Butterfly guessed he hadn’t wanted to draw attention to Drums No More’s infirmity. She and the other members of her family did the same around One Hand, quietly assisting with what he couldn’t accomplish on his own but leaving him with as much of his dignity as possible.
“I wish Drums No More and I could share our thoughts,” she told Cougar. “I would like to learn from his wisdom, to know what his life is like.”
“He is not a man who easily opens himself to others.” Cougar said something to his grandfather, then nodded at the response. “He is ready.”
“Not afraid?” she asked.
Cougar started to shake his head, then paused. “If he is, he keeps his fear to himself. Let him walk his way, Morning Butterfly. It has gotten him through his life.”
Her people called the Navajo simple, but there was nothing simple about either Drums No More or Cougar, especially Cougar. As they set off, accompanied by waves from what looked like the entire tribe, she fixed her gaze on the broad, naked back ahead of her, remembered the feel of Cougar’s hand on her throat as he brushed back her hair. By imitating what Cougar and Drums No More did, she managed to get her horse to start walking, and although she didn’t think she’d ever get used to the uneven rocking motion, remaining on horseback wouldn’t take all of her concentration. The rest went to Cougar—Cougar, who had tucked a knife under his kilt and, like his grandfather, carried a pouch filled with green stones.
Maybe he’d taken the burden of keeping the soldiers away from his village onto his shoulders because risking his life was easier than facing a conflict between the young and old that might tear his tribe apart. If that was so, he was truly a brave man.
Maybe more.
Maybe he was a man she could love.
• • •
On horseback, with Cougar setting a hard pace, the distance from the Navajo village to Oraibi was traveled in less time than it took the sun to complete a single journey. They’d spoken little during the trip, each lost in his or her own thoughts. When Oraibi came into view, they stopped for a bite of food and a drink of water for themselves and their horses. Then, still silent, they plunged ahead.
Pablo announced their arrival to Captain Lopez. The captain had been watching the padre attempt to show a group of children the proper demeanor for prayer. The soldier told his superior that two Navajo men and a Hopi woman were riding toward Oraibi, and Lopez grunted in surprise. Angelico, on his knees, still forcing a Hopi child to kneel, looked up and insisted, “In the name of God Almighty, there will be no killing today!” He asked Pablo, “They are not armed, are they?”
“I saw no weapons, Padre,” the soldier answered.
“See! They come in peace and to ask the Lord’s forgiveness.”
There were times when the padre’s thinking left Lopez shaking his head in disbelief. Biting back a criticism, he asked Pablo how he could he sure the woman was Hopi.
“Because it is the one who cared for me when the Navajo tried to kill me.”
“Morning Butterfly?” the padre and Lopez exclaimed in unison.
Angelico was the first to regain his composure. He explained that because he hadn’t seen her for several days, he’d been afraid she was sick. Lopez didn’t buy it for an instant. Why Angelico hadn’t gone up to Oraibi to search for her, he didn’t know, but he had his suspicions.
Lopez studied the newcomers as he neared them, Angelico at his heels. He couldn’t be sure, of course, since all savages looked the same, but he suspected that the warrior riding beside Morning Butterfly was the self-same one who’d earlier tried to buy his favor with emeralds. Morning Butterfly herself looked about to jump out of her skin, her eyes flashing from him to Angelico, then back to him again. As for the old man . . .
“I beg you,” Morning Butterfly said once they were close enough that a decent conversation was possible, “do not kill us before you have heard us out.”
Lopez laughed. “If I order my men to kill you now, I can devote myself to more important matters.”
She blinked rapidly several times, but to her credit, she didn’t try to run—not that he had any intention of shooting her until he had learned all she knew of the Navajo village. “Where have you been?” he demanded.
She told him, her words rushed and awkward. Although he had to struggle to concentrate on what she was saying instead of the way her skirt slid up her thigh when she dismounted, he realized that she wanted him to believe she’d been a captive of the Navajo.
He might have swallowed her story—except she and Cougar occasionally spoke to each other in Hopi and she even seemed to want to argue with him—hardly something a terrified captive would do. He wondered if the padre had caught on or was so besotted with her that he’d believe anything she said.
“Enough!” he exclaimed when, for the second time, she insisted the Navajo hadn’t wanted to incur his wrath by stealing horses. “If the Navajo were truly quaking in fear, they would have already brought the animals back. Ask them, where are the Crown’s horses?”
He assumed that was what she was doing during the long conversation she carried on with the two men. He’d be a fool to trust Cougar, who didn’t seem to give a damn whether he lived or died and undoubtedly had a weapon hidden on him, but what was the old man doing here? Maybe he was some kind of spiritual leader. If that was the case, Lopez thought with a rueful smile, it was a shame he and the padre couldn’t communicate, because they might kill each other during the attempt at conversion.
“Navajo legends foretold of the time when horses would come to them,” Morning Butterfly finally told him. “They believe the animals are gifts from their gods.”
“You cannot be serious! All right, all right,” he said, calming himself. “So—so why are they apologizing?”
“Because the legends did not foretell the coming of the Spanish. They do not know which way to walk.”
The whole thing was nonsense! “I will tell them which way to walk; straight into hell.”
“Captain,” Angelico interjected, nodding at Pablo for reinforcement, “that is for the Lord to decide, not man. Only He determines whether a person has lived a godless life.”
“Will you be still! I swear, I cannot say a word without you spouting scripture.”
Pablo positioned himself between the two men. Not for the first time, Lopez acknowledged the padre’s hold over his deeply religious troops. “Look, Morning Butterfly,” the captain said. “I want you to ask these braves one question and one question only. Are they going to return the Crown’s horses, or am I going to have to go after them?”
If she had any reaction, she kept it to herself—hardly for the first time since the conversation began. He assumed she was posing the question to the two, because the old man took an abrupt backward step, then looked around as if seeking an escape route. Cougar, however, remained impassive, and his response was short and clipped.
“He says the horses must remain with his people as the gods ordained,” she said.
“There!” Angelico exclaimed. “That is what my work is all about. You see how misguided they are, how ignorant? The church cannot be built soon enough.”
“This is not about that damnable church of yours. It is about horses. Horses!” That and the fact that I’ll have the devil’s own time accounting to the Crown and my father-in-law if I don’t get the nags back.
He supposed he could have given Cougar one last chance to change his mind, a generous offer that would have sat well with the padre, but it was getting dark and he was hungry—and for more than just food.
“Pablo,” he said, “I place these three under arrest.”
Pablo aimed his musket at Cougar’s chest. The Navajo stepped back, his hand sliding to his waist. In response, Lopez lifted his own weapon, but instead of drilling a hole through the savage the way he wanted, he aimed at Morning Butterfly. Cougar stared defiantly at him, then, slowly, let his hand drop.
“So, you are not as ignorant as certain people would have me believe. Pablo, throw a rope over him.”
“But—”
“Now! Believe me, he will not do anything that might endanger her life.”
Despite his confident words, Lopez breathed a sigh of relief once Pablo had lashed Cougar’s hands behind him and taken away his crude knife. The savage continued to glare at Lopez and although helpless, he looked dangerous, wild.
“Now the old man,” Lopez ordered.
“Captain Lopez, I must protest. These people came in peace.”
“Go build your church, Padre. Or if you are so inclined, baptize more of the savages. I am certain they will see the light once they feel the weight of your hand on their heads.”
“You will regret this!”
“Padre, what we have to say to each other is not fit for a public airing.”
“No,” Angelico agreed. “It is not.”
Pablo had been shuffling from one foot to the other during the exchange, but when Lopez jerked his head at him, the young man hurried over to the old Navajo and grabbed the arm that had been angled behind his back. As the end of that arm came into view, Lopez and Fray Angelico sucked in their breaths.
“By all that is holy,” Angelico began, “what—”
“He was at Acoma,” Lopez interrupted. Striding forward, he jerked the ruined arm out of Pablo’s grip and held what was left up to the dying light. “Tell me, old man, when you heard the others scream, did you scream too?”
Although he trembled slightly, the old man gave no other indication he’d heard a word, and Lopez belatedly remembered the language barrier. Still gripping the disgusting stump, he hauled the Navajo over to Morning Butterfly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cougar’s chest expand, his leg muscles contract. By his grandfather’s memory, if Pablo hadn’t done an inadequate job of securing him—
“You heard me.” He addressed Morning Butterfly. “You know what I asked him. I do not care what you have to do, but I demand an answer.”
Morning Butterfly had heard Fray Angelico speak of how he couldn’t tolerate her people’s slow understanding of the word of God. When he did, his voice rang with an emotion hot as the hottest summer sun. This, she believed, was hatred, and she’d never wanted to feel anything like that herself. Now, as she looked up at Captain Lopez, she wondered if she might catch fire from the heat of her own emotion.
“Do not do this,” she warned, defiance boiling out of her. “Do not take him back to that time and place.”
“I warn you, do not test my patience. Ask him!”
“Morning Butterfly,” Cougar hissed in Hopi.
She told him what Lopez had said.
Cougar nearly growled. “Say my grandfather prayed to die and has lived in that place they call hell from that day on.”
“What?”
“Do it! Trust me.”
Trust me. Despite everything that was happening, his words burrowed deep inside her. Before Lopez could demand to be told what they’d been talking about, she said Cougar had insisted on an explanation. That seemed to please the captain, who repeated his demand that she probe into Drums No More’s past.
“His name is Drums No More because he was once a Navajo singer but is no longer able to make a drum sing in time with his words,” she said after Cougar fed her the words. “He was a young man, not much more than a youth, who had gone to Acoma to trade when the Spanish arrived.”
“Not just any Spanish, Morning Butterfly,” the captain corrected. “My grandfather.”
“Yes, I know. Soldiers threw him to the ground and placed his hand on a rock,” she continued. A wave of nausea momentarily rendered her speechless. “He tried to tell the soldiers he was not their enemy, but they did not listen. When the axe came down, he prayed to die and then he fainted.”
Glancing at Drums No More, she saw that his remaining fingers had turned white around the knuckles. Maybe he didn’t understand her words, but he had to know what she was talking about, had to be reliving the nightmare. Fighting the horror emanating from him, she took a calming breath. “When he woke up, he prayed it had been a nightmare because he could not bear the truth.”
Captain Lopez’s lips twitched. “What has it been like since then for him?” he prompted as he fingered Cougar’s knife.
“Why are you asking this?”
“You are not a military man, Morning Butterfly, so you cannot understand how fear weakens the enemy. Ask him, damn it!”
Hatred nearly clamping her throat shut, she told Cougar and Drums No More what she had to. Speaking in short, harsh bursts, Drums No More said something in Navajo. Although she couldn’t understand the words, she felt his tension.
“Listen to me,” Cougar said with his eyes fixed on Drums No More, his words slapping at her raw emotions. “If I live, I will avenge my grandfather.”
“Cougar, please, your fury imperils us all.”
“And you feel no hate?” he asked as Drums No More’s jaw clenched and his nostrils flared. “Can you tell me that and still speak the truth?”
She couldn’t and he knew it, she realized, feeling more vulnerable than she had in her entire life.
“What do I say to the captain’s question?” she forced herself to ask.
Cougar expelled a harsh breath that reminded her of the sound his namesake made after a kill. If he felt the loss of his weapon, he gave no indication. “Tell him—tell him Drums No More often consults the shamans and has them perform peace-thought ceremonies for him, but they do no good.”
“Cougar!” Drums No More hissed. Then he said something that Cougar didn’t translate.
“Is that true?” Morning Butterfly asked. “The shamans are of no help to him?”
“No. But it would please the captain and padre to hear that—and today I will please them. Tomorrow . . .” His chest expanded as he tested his bonds. “Tomorrow I will have my revenge.”
I pray for that.
As she relayed Cougar’s words to the captain, she felt herself draw into a tight, small ball. If only she could run from here! Instead, she was forced to remain where she was as Lopez told the padre to direct some of his workers to build a fire. Once the flames reached for the emerging stars, he would have her, Cougar, and Drums No More brought to it.
Cougar remained impassive, but Drums No More tried to shrink away from their captor. When Captain Lopez pointed his sword at Drums No More’s throat, the old man reached inside his shirt and withdrew the emerald-filled bag. After a short hesitation, Lopez accepted the gift and opened it. His eyes narrowed, and he ordered Pablo to search Cougar.
“What is this?” he demanded after Pablo handed him the second bag. “Morning Butterfly, they will tell you everything, understand?”
The hate-heat that had threatened to consume her earlier had begun to fade. Now it returned, but she fought it just as she fought the need to look at Cougar.
“And when you have your answer, wha
t will happen to them?”
He chuckled, then glanced at the padre as if expecting him to see the same humor in the situation. When he received no response, he shook his head.
• • •
“Good.”
“Cougar, how can you say that?” Morning Butterfly demanded. No matter how much she tried to banish the image, she saw the three of them as hunted deer. Maybe the arrows had already been launched.
“In his eyes, I was dead the moment I rode into sight of him.”
Her head screamed in pain that became nearly unbearable when she looked at the old man sitting on the ground, his ruined arm cradled in his lap. She’d freed Cougar once and given him back his life, but tonight she had no knife.
Captain Lopez stood behind her with his hands on her shoulders. His breath smelled of the roasted sheep he’d just eaten. She desperately needed to say more to Cougar, but Captain Lopez was an impatient man and she’d do whatever she needed to keep him from killing Cougar and Drums No More.
“Tell the captain that the great canyon where the emeralds came from is sacred to the Navajo and to speak of it in certain ways may bring danger,” Cougar said, “but I will do so if he promises to set my grandfather free.”
“When he knows where to look, he will kill you.”
“Maybe.”
Chapter Seventeen
After what seemed a lifetime, Captain Lopez told Morning Butterfly that he had no further use for her. Although Cougar felt a wrenching loss as she slowly walked away, looking over her shoulder at him, he also breathed a sigh of relief.
Once she was out of earshot, Captain Lopez spat a few words at Pablo, glared a death-making stare at Cougar, and hurried away. Cougar’s stomach growled and his shoulders ached from the unnatural position they’d been forced into, but his concern for his grandfather made it possible for him to ignore his discomfort.