The Indians heard him out but offered no reply. They spoke quietly among themselves before mounting Gus, Silver Pickles, Delilah, and Blackbeard. One of them approached Pegasus cautiously, but jumped back when the camel bared his teeth. The brave raised his lance and drew back his arm. Chimera sprang forward and grabbed Pegasus’s bridle. “Put that thing down!” she demanded. “Don’t you dare—”
“Chimera, please,” Sterling begged. “Be quiet!”
She ignored him and continued to glare at the warrior. “I’m getting a little sick of all these weapons, the threatening shouts, this ungrateful behavior. To think that this is the way we’re to be treated after all we’ve been through to do you a favor. It’s shameful. Darn shameful!”
At her yelling, the warrior stepped well away from her and went to retrieve Sterling’s Colts. More Indians descended the cliff, and, prodding at their captives with their lances and gesturing toward the distance, they moved Sterling and the children forward.
Chimera realized they meant to leave her behind. There wasn’t a single Apache left to take her. Not about to be excluded, she followed, Pegasus right beside her.
Sterling looked over his shoulder and saw her tagging along. He saw her quick, furious stride and the look of rage on her face.
He wondered if instead of praying for her and the children, he should pray for the Apaches.
Sterling was amazed at how close to finding Cochise’s stronghold they’d been. The walk to it had taken no longer than an hour. It was no wonder the Indians had finally decided to show themselves.
After making sure Chimera was still following, he watched men, women, and children coming out of wickiups, their little semi-spherical huts. Some wore buckskin clothing, but others were dressed much like whites in printed cottons and flannels. The smell of roasting beef was thick in the air. One of Sprague’s steers, Sterling decided. He looked at several cookfires, astonished to see laid across them the familiar comales, flat, iron sheets used to heat tortillas. He watched as one angry woman returned to her fire and kicked at the tortillas she’d allowed to burn.
“They gonna kill us, Sterling?” Snig asked, and stared at an Indian boy who was looking at him.
“They’ve had ample opportunity to do so, and they haven’t,” Sterling answered. But why had the Apaches let them live when they had slaughtered so many others? He tried to gather the children within his arms when a group of women and children crowded around to gawk at them.
“Look at that boy’s slingshot!” Snug exclaimed to his brothers. “Lemme see that,” he said, and broke away from Sterling to advance toward the Apache boy.
With swift, easy motions, the boy loaded his weapon with a stone and flung the pebble at Snug.
“Damn you!” Snug rubbed his bruised shoulder, then threw himself at the young Indian.
“Snug!” Sterling yelled. He started for them, but one warrior held up a lance. Sterling stopped and took tight hold of Snig and Snag when they tried to join Snug in the fight, no easy task since he still held Venus in his arm.
Snug and the Apache boy rolled in the dirt, upsetting water jugs and piles of firewood before staggering to their feet. “I just wanted to see the damn slingshot!” Snug yelled at his adversary. “I wasn’t gonna steal the blasted thing! Ain’t you Indians ever heard of sharin’?” He gave the boy a well-aimed blow to the chin.
The Indian youngster responded with a shrill cry and punched Snug in the stomach. Breathless, Snug rolled away, holding his middle, but kicked out at the Apache boy, hitting him square in the chest. On the ground again, they coded around each other, shouting, flailing and rolling toward a blazing fire.
Chimera flew toward them when she saw the danger. But as fast as she ran, she couldn’t reach Snug before he spun into the flames. Horror gripped her when she saw his coat was ablaze. “Oh, sweet heaven! Snug!”
Sterling started for him too, but was again halted by the warrior. “Dammit, he’s on fire! Let me—”
He stopped when he saw a tall Indian snatch Snug from the ground. He watched as the Apache deftly wound a blanket around the boy and saw how tightly the man held Snug to him.
“Snug!” Chimera pulled the boy from the warrior’s arms and opened the blanket. Except for a burned hole in the shoulder of Snug’s coat, the fire had done nothing to him. The blanket had effectively smothered the flames. Relieved, she sank to the ground, holding him closely. Her attention was caught by the moccasins at her knees. They had rawhide soles and buckskin uppers, the toes pointing upward. A stripe was painted along the seam that attached the sole to the upper, It was as red as blood, and she wondered if it was blood. The uppers were folded around the warrior’s ankles, and she saw a knife sticking from the folded buckskin on his right foot. Her gaze traveled upward, taking in buckskin breeches that stretched tightly across firm, muscular thighs. A buckskin shin, elaborately fringed at the shoulders and lower sleeves, was above the breeches, and over it hung a beautiful necklace of silver, from which was suspended a small mirror ringed with beadwork. The warrior’s hair fell to his shoulders, shining brilliantly in the late afternoon sunshine. A length of blue cloth wound around the warrior’s head kept his thick hair out of his eyes.
His face was neither kind nor evil, it was blank. His features, though, were noble, almost aristocratic. She looked into his eyes. They were staring down at her, black, unmoving. She could read nothing in them, but felt they could see everything there was to know about her.
Shaken, she looked away, cooed softly to Snug, then rose. “I’m sorry he did all this damage,” she told the silent warrior. “I see he broke those jugs over there, knocked down piles of wood, and—”
“The other boy’s the one who started it, Chimera,” Snug insisted. “I just asked if I could see his stupid slingshot, and he—”
“Snug, I think you owe this man some gratitude for saving you from burning,” Chimera admonished.
Snug looked up at the tall warrior. “He probably don’t even understand English. Why should I thank him when he—”
“It doesn’t matter. Tell him anyway.”
Snug kicked a rock and watched it bounce off a wickiup. “Thanks.” He spied the Indian boy again and dug into his pants pocket, pulling out his own slingshot. “Who cares about your slingshot? I got my own, and it’s a zillion times better than the one you got!” He held up the weapon.
The Apache boy rushed forward to see it, but stopped and walked away when the tall warrior spoke sharply to him. The man then gave some command to the other braves, and Chimera watched them lead Gus and the triplets’ horses to a small corral. Whoever this tall, impressive Apache was, he had some power here.
“Are you Cochise?” she blurted. “Do you speak English? Do you speak Spanish? Sterling, tell him—” She broke off when she saw the warrior’s eyes light up. But was it the glow of anger or amusement? “You look like you’re about to laugh...but you also look like you might be ready to slap me. Just what exactly are you—”
“Chimera, come over here,” Sterling said, an Apache lance still trained on him. “His mood is his own business, and I expect we’ll find out what it is shortly. Now—”
“Are you Cochise?” Chimera asked the warrior again. “If you are, we’ve brought Venus back to your tribe. She must be one of you because Sterling found her mother right here in these very mountains. Is her father here? Or maybe her brother or sister? We call her Venus because she’s loving and beautiful. Of course, I realize you’ve probably never heard of mythology, but the Romans had this goddess of love and beauty, and they called her Venus. You can give her an Indian name if you want, I guess, but since she already responds to the name we call her, I think it’s better if you just—”
“Chimera, shut up!” Sterling yelled, and tried to shield the children from several curious squaws.
The tall warrior gave another command, and one of the braves went to Sterling and took Venus from him. Venus looked up at the warrior who held her, screwed up her tiny face, and began to
wail.
Chimera rushed forward and tried to take the baby from the brave. “She doesn’t know you and is afraid,” she tried to explain when the man would not relinquish Venus to her. “Let me have her. Darn it, let me have her!” Frustrated, she turned to the tall warrior. “Tell him to give Venus to me. She’s frightened and hungry. After a sock of milk and some cuddling, she might be more inclined to let strangers hold her. You do have milk here, don’t you?” She demonstrated her wishes by pretending to put food in her mouth. She chewed and swallowed it and then pointed at Venus. “Eat. She needs to eat!”
Sterling echoed her words in Spanish. Chimera and the children repeated them in English again.
The tall warrior spoke. His deep, authoritative voice sliced through all the noise. A squaw took Venus from the warrior who held her and disappeared into a wickiup.
Chimera gasped and tried to follow. She was halted by four warriors, who gestured for her to join Sterling. When she refused to cooperate, but only stood with her arms folded across her breasts, Sterling took advantage of the situation and rushed toward her. The Indians allowed him this and watched as he pulled Chimera back to where the children stood. “Chimera,” he whispered, “keep your mouth shut until we find out what they’re going to do, dammit!”
She sighed with frustration. “Sterling, they aren’t going to hurt us. Haven’t you realized that yet? That tall one over there saved Snug from being burned, and—”
“Venus is screamin’ her head off,” Snag interrupted worriedly. “Sterling, you don’t think that Indian lady’s hurtin’ her, do you?”
Sterling didn’t know what to think about anything. Chimera had made a valid point. The tall warrior had rescued Snug. The Apaches had killed the cougar. The Indians were not falling over themselves to be hospitable, but they were not acting hostile either. Just what the hell was going on?
As if the tall one read his thoughts, he motioned for Sterling to come to him. Sterling was hesitant to leave Chimera and the children but dared not disobey the man who had such authority over the other warriors.
“You are not afraid to come here?” the warrior asked in fluent Spanish.
Sterling looked intently into the blackest eyes he’d ever seen. “You’re not afraid to have us here?” He thought he saw the warrior’s lips twitch.
“We have watched you for twelve sunrises.”
“For twelve sunrises you’ve had us riding in circles.”
“Many Ghost Faces have passed since we first saw her.” The warrior inclined his head toward Chimera.
“Ghost faces?” Sterling asked.
“The time when the land is white.”
“Winters. You’ve known of her for many years?”
The warrior nodded. “She is La Loca. We have seen her speaking to plants. On her belly. Why does she do this?”
They called her Crazy Woman, Sterling mused. “She doesn’t speak to plants. She believes in little people and thinks their colonies are under bushes.” He raised his hand and demonstrated with his fingers the height of gnomes.
The warrior’s eyes bulged, his face a mask of disbelief. He took one long step away from Sterling. “And...do you see these little people too?”
“No,” Sterling said quickly. “I’ve never seen any evidence of them at all. But you can’t tell her they aren’t real. She swears they are.”
The warrior scowled fiercely. “Why do you stay with one such as she?”
The man’s deep frown and cross tone told Sterling that Chimera’s lunacy was a serious subject and not to be scoffed at, as Sterling was prone to do. Were the Apaches afraid of crazy people? And if so, how the hell could he convince this suspicious and dangerous man that Chimera was no more harmful than a butterfly?
“You take a great risk to stay with her,” the warrior insisted. “In her body live spirits. She should be left alone or you might disturb them.”
Comprehension flooded Sterling. The Apache had never molested Chimera because of their respect for the spirits they believed dwelt inside her. And because he and the children lived with her, the Apache had left them alone also. “I’ve been with her for nine months,” he said. “Nine months.” He wondered if the warrior knew what a month was. “It was around the end of May, or—”
“You came to her at the time of Many Leaves. We saw you hang from the tree.”
“Yeah. Many Leaves.” The warrior was quite definite about Many Leaves, and Sterling reckoned the name to mean late spring or early summer, which was when he’d fallen into the werewolf snare. “And since Many Leaves, nothing bad has happened to me. If there’s a spirit inside her, it’s a good one. Do you think I’d have stayed with her for so long if I were in any danger?”
The warrior thought about this but shook his head.
“Why did you bring us here if she’s a danger to you?” Sterling asked.
“You had almost found us. I do not trust you and must decide what to do with you.”
Sterling squared his shoulders. “Let us go.”
The warrior glared at him. “Do you command me?”
“We’ve risked our lives to bring Venus to you. We’ve done the honorable thing by returning her. You, too, must do the honorable thing and allow us to leave unharmed.”
The warrior’s brow rose. “I am Cochise, the one you seek. You dare to make deals with me? You dare to demand honor when no honor has been shown to the Apache?”
Sterling felt apprehension and relief flood him at the same time. Cochise was a deadly adversary, but the great chief had shown compassion once upon a time. “I’ve heard the stories about you. I know you’re noble and intelligent. But you’ve been angered. You make war on whites because you’ve been lied to. Because you spoke the truth, and your words weren’t believed. You’ve reacted to that unjust treatment as would any other man, Indian or white. But I cannot believe there isn’t a shred of mercy left in your heart. Yes, I dare to make a deal with you. I dare to believe you’ll do the right thing and let us go. Yes, I dare to demand honor from you.”
Cochise’s jaw tightened. “I could kill you, Ojos de Plata.”
Silver Eyes. The chief had named him Silver Eyes. “Yes, and that’s exactly what you might have to do because I won’t stay here and neither will the woman or children. If I must fight you to free us, I will.”
“You have no weapons.”
“I have my hands.”
“You are a brave man, or you are stupid.” With that, Cochise turned and left Sterling standing there.
Chimera sat down beside Sterling, who was tied to a fat tree trunk. “Sterling,” she said, and touched his cheek. “I’m sorry I got us into this mess. I didn’t mean to. I never dreamed they’d tie you up. Why’d they do that?”
“The only reason I can think of is that I’m a man. Cochise came right out and said he didn’t trust me. You probably aren’t considered as great a threat. Of course he doesn’t know you as well as I do. If he did, you’d be the one tied up. You—”
“Well, at least the children aren’t bound,” she interjected, and looked at the wickiup into which the children had been taken. “And I saw a woman bring food to them. Sterling, do you have any idea what Cochise is going to do?”
“No, but from what I understand, the Apache aren’t too happy about your gnomes. They think you’re crazy. But they have a fearful respect for the spirits they think live inside you.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!” Chimera flared. She was free to come and go at will, but Sterling had forced her to swear on Xenia’s soul that she would stay with him, and keep out of trouble. Staying put, however, did not mean she also had to remain silent. “Cochise! Cochise, I want to speak to you!”
“Chimera, you’ve been screaming for him for over two hours. I don’t think he even hears you. It’s my guess they’re having some sort of tribal meeting in that hut he and some of his men went into. Until it’s over and they decide what to do with us, the children are going to stay guarded, and I’m g
oing to stay tied to this damn tree. And don’t you forget your promise. Just because they’ve left you unbound doesn’t mean you’re welcome to bother anyone.”
A long wail hit Chimera’s ears. “Venus hasn’t stopped crying since they took her away,” she said, and looked at the wickiup from which the baby’s cries came. “She won’t eat well for anyone but me, and I bet she’s starving. It’s been hours since she last ate, and—”
She broke off when Cochise emerged from the wickiup. He spoke to several warriors, who hurried away to do his bidding. It was all Chimera could do not to ran to the chief and talk to him, but she would honor the oath she’d made to Sterling and stay put.
A short while later the entire tribe gathered in the center of the rancheria, where a bonfire had been ignited. Sterling and Chimera watched as the man with silvery black hair who’d been present during their capture began to beat violently upon a small pottery dram. A soft chiming sound soon joined the beat, and Chimera saw that it came from the straight line of four warriors emerging from the shadows. They wore huge wooden headdresses that looked much like candelabra to Chimera. The headdresses had buckskin hoods that covered the men’s faces and were drawn around their necks with drawstrings. Attached to the top of the headdresses were horns, feathers, and juniper. Their yellow buckskin shirts, ornamented with thin lines of beading, reached their knees and were held in place by hide belts embellished with silver conchos. High moccasins covered their legs, but their bare arms and chests were painted with brightly colored symbols.
A fifth warrior sprang into the clearing and began jumping in a demented fashion. “And they call me crazy,” Chimera mumbled, watching the wild man. He wore only moccasins and a breechclout. His rawhide mask had large ears sticking out of the sides, and his entire body was painted stark white. Chimera thought him a terrifying sight.
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