by Diana Palmer
Naki was tall for his race, very taciturn and quiet. He had no wife, no family. He wasn’t an old man, yet there was something ancient in his black eyes. He kept much to himself. Only to Thorn Vance did he warm, and that was because Vance had taken the time to learn his language. He was the only white man who had ever done that in Naki’s memory, except for the archaeologist, McCollum. Not that Naki understood only Apache. He spoke several languages, but when he was brooding he would only answer to Apache. This was one of those times.
Having tried English and failed, Thorn queried in Apache, “Where is Tiza?” referring to the man’s Mimbreños Apache friend who usually tracked with him.
“Oyaa. Naghaa,” Naki replied in his slow, deep voice, adding another few words behind them and drawling out the long vowels, punctuating the syllables with glottal stops, nasalized consonants, and high tones as necessary to make the meanings clear. “He has gone. He is walking around.”
Thorn looked off toward the horizon and chuckled. “Nakwii,” he corrected, glancing wickedly toward Naki. “He is vomiting.”
The Apache shrugged. “White man’s liquor. I did not give it to him.”
Thorn went down on one knee, meeting the quiet eyes of the other man. Naki was in his middle thirties, barely older than Thorn’s thirty-two years. “I’ve humored you. Now speak English.”
“If you wish. But it leaves a bad taste in my mouth,” Naki replied dryly—in barely accented, almost perfect English, a legacy from his years in hiding with the priests when his Chiricahua relatives had been sent off to a Florida prison after Geronimo’s capture. “Your use of Apache is not practiced.”
“I haven’t got time to practice it. I need to find water. A lot of water.”
“Is that all?” Naki waved his arm. “There’s a river a few miles away,” he said helpfully.
Thorn glared at the Indian. “I need water right here for my cattle,” he emphasized. “I can’t move the river.”
Naki shrugged. “Move the cattle.”
“You can be so damned maddening,” he said irritably. “Why don’t I fire you?”
“Who else could read Herodotus to you in the original Greek?” came the sardonic reply. “Not to mention leading your archaeologist friend to the best digs. Without me to guide him, McCollum would pitch headfirst into a mine shaft and never be seen again.”
Thorn threw up his hands. “All right, I concede that you’re a miracle of education. Now how about telling me where to look for water?”
Naki leaned toward Thorn conspiratorially, his straight black hair falling around his handsome, high-cheekboned face. “Try Blackwater Springs Ranch.”
The Apache got to his feet and walked off, leaving Thorn in a raging fury. Thorn was certain that the Chinese had nothing on his friend when it came to being inscrutable.
CHAPTER SEVEN
NAKI MOUNTED HIS horse with consummate ease and rode back to where Thorn was still standing, glaring at him.
“No need to glower at me,” he said imperturbably. “We Apaches wrote the book on being taciturn. When I find water, I’ll come back,” he said. “If I don’t find it, I’ll send you a note before I throw myself off a cliff.”
“Apaches don’t have a sense of humor,” Thorn reminded him. “Every book I’ve ever read says so.”
“You’ve been reading the wrong books. Ask your archeologist friend McCollum. He spent a month with us. We gave him some very interesting information about our people.” He grinned.
“Craig McCollum isn’t an archaeologist, he’s an anthropologist who also teaches a course in archaeology. And future historians will curse you if you confused him about your culture,” Thorn pointed out.
“He did at least have the decency to learn our language, as you have. Most of your people are too arrogant to feel the need.”
“It’s a hell of a language to learn.”
“So the anthropologist—” he stressed the word “—said. He was required to take notes in Apache and even to do a life history of the elders he interviewed for information. However, white man, our language is still simpler than yours,” Naki retorted. “See you in a few days.” He turned his paint pony and trotted off toward the sunset.
Tiza waved to him. He paused and told the old man where he was going but declined company. There were times when he craved solitude. This was one of them.
THE RAILWAY STATION on Railroad Avenue in Douglas was crowded for a Saturday. Trilby was all but dancing on the platform, her blue gingham dress swirling around her ankles as she walked, her pert bonnet crowning her upswept blond hair. She looked young and attractive with her radiant face, and Mary Lang smiled at her impatience.
“Gosh, sis, can’t you sit down?” Teddy muttered impatiently. “You’re wearing a hole in the wood!”
“I can’t wait! Oh, what if he isn’t on the train?” Trilby wailed. “I can’t bear it if he isn’t on the train!”
“He telegraphed us that he would be. Julie and Ben and Sissy are with him, too. We’ll have a grand time, girl.” Jack chuckled. “It will be nice to see familiar faces from home.”
“Especially one face, Trilby’s thinking,” Mary said, with an indulgent smile.
“Oh, Richard, take me away with you!” Teddy said in a theatrical voice, sweeping an arm over his eyes.
Trilby hit him with her parasol. “You stop that!”
He stuck his tongue out at her. “Richard and Trilby, Richard and Trilby— Ouch!”
“Stop that, young man,” Jack admonished. “That will be quite enough misbehaving for one day.”
Teddy rubbed his sore posterior and glared at his father. “You’re horrible to me, Father.”
“Remind me of that again when you buy a peppermint stick at the drugstore.”
Teddy’s eyes lit up. “How about an ice cream instead?”
“Not today. Our guests will be tired and want to go straight to the ranch. But next time we come to town, I promise you an ice cream. Will that do?”
“Yes, sir!”
Trilby barely heard the byplay. Her eyes were riveted to the horizon, where the train was puffing furiously toward the station, thick smoke rising and drifting behind it in the wind.
“Sets fires all along its path, damned thing,” an old-timer was muttering nearby. “I hate trains. I hate civilization. When I came here in ’52, ’t weren’t even a road. Or a town, for that matter. ’Twere only Apaches and a few Mexicans. ’Twas a better place without all these tearooms and ice-cream parlors and women’s betterment leagues!”
“They closed down the only saloon out of twenty that would give him credit last week,” Jack whispered to Mary, and chuckled. “He hasn’t had a drink since.”
Mary choked back a laugh. She glanced back at the runabout, which would only hold three people unless they packed in like sardines. Richard was bringing Ben and Sissy and Julie with him; that made four. Trilby, her father, mother, and Teddy made another four. They’d never have managed to stuff them into the car, so they’d hired a second one, complete with driver, from the local livery. It had been Trilby’s idea, and she’d paid for it with the money she made from selling eggs and butter. Mary had felt sad that the small fee had come so hard. She, like Trilby and the others, was used to a much richer standard of living than they’d been able to enjoy since moving here.
Mary was distracted by the arrival of the train. Its puffing approach brought more people onto the platform, straining to see through the smoke. Several were coughing when the iron horse pulled to a stop, finally, and passengers began to climb down the steps onto the siding.
“Look!” Trilby exclaimed as a tall, sandy-haired man with a valise stepped nattily from the train. “It’s Richard!”
Richard Bates heard her and looked in her direction. He was a tall, blond man with a faint mustache and a pale complexion, dressed in a natty gray suit and matching bowler hat. A smile broke out on his handsome face as he spotted her. “Trilby!”
She wanted to run into his arms, but his st
ance wasn’t that welcoming. He moved toward her with his usual lazy grace and took her hand. He kissed it warmly, but with no more than gentle amusement and some affection. His eyes took in her family before they came back to her.
“How nice of you to invite us,” he said. “We’ve all looked forward to this visit. Sissy, come on!” he called irritably over his shoulder. “She’s so maddening,” he groaned. “She can’t seem to walk two steps without falling over her feet. That’s what comes of spending your life with your nose stuck in a book!”
Sissy was his sister, one of Trilby’s oldest friends. “You mustn’t be unkind, Richard,” she chided. “Sissy’s very intelligent.”
“She’s a trial. You don’t know!” he moaned. He glanced back and smiled in a different way at the striking blonde just leaving the train before Sissy. “There’s my best girl. Come here, Cousin Julie, and meet the Langs. Everyone, this is my cousin, Julie Moureaux, from New Orleans. You remember my sister Sissy, of course, she’s just coming down the steps. And my brother—Ben, where are you?”
A young, dark-haired man who was just a little too thin was escorting Sissy off the train. They made an interesting pair, the slight, brown-headed girl in spectacles beside the lanky, clumsy youth. They favored each other far more than they favored their older brother.
“They’re so fascinated by thoughts of wild Indians that they’ve embarrassed me every step of the way, staring out the train windows looking for them,” Richard said disgustedly. “They’ve been certain that we were all going to be scalped the minute we crossed the border into Arizona. I’d never have brought them with me if I’d had any idea how they’d behave on this trip.” He turned back to his cousin while Sissy and Ben were busy staring around in absorbed fascination with their new surroundings. “Julie,” he continued, with a smile, holding her hand warmly, “you remember Trilby, don’t you?”
“It’s been years since we’ve seen each other, but of course I do,” Julie said politely, her blue eyes twinkling. She extended her hand with a friendly smile. “It’s so nice of you to invite us all. I hope we won’t be a trial to you.”
“How silly, of course you won’t!” Mary Lang replied, coming forward to greet them. Trilby was at a loss for words as she saw with sinking heart the way Richard and Julie were behaving toward each other. “You must think of the ranch as your home, for as long as you like.”
Richard looked around at the desolate landscape and the sand and grimaced. “I should think that won’t be long, Mrs. Lang. How does one survive in a horrible place like this?”
“It isn’t easy, I promise you,” Trilby said, refusing to allow Richard’s perfectly normal response to the desert to unsettle her. It was horrible, after all. Hadn’t she said so time and time again?
“Why, it isn’t horrible at all, my lad,” Jack Lang said indignantly. “You’ll see. It has a great deal to offer.”
Richard merely shrugged and smiled at Julie.
Sissy came forward to be soundly hugged by Trilby, along with Ben. “Oh, it’s so good to see you again!” Trilby told the other girl. “I haven’t any women friends out here. Except for Mama, there’s been no other woman to talk to.”
“I’d hardly call Sissy a woman,” Richard said, with brotherly candor. “She’s straight as a stick and she actually goes to college!” he added, as if his sister’s interest in higher education was an aberration. “She’s twenty-three and she’s never had a beau—”
“Shut up, Richard,” Sissy muttered, pushing her glasses back on her prim nose with a vicious jab of her finger. Through the lenses, her green eyes glittered at him. “A lot you know about me!”
“You’re unkind, Dick,” Ben said, and turned red at his own audacity. “You’re always picking on Sissy.”
“Now, both of you stop,” Cousin Julie chided. “We’re guests here, remember, and you’re acting like babies.”
Sissy and Ben glared at her. She was younger than they were, at nineteen, and they didn’t like her, either.
She seemed to realize that she’d overstepped her bounds, because she smiled languidly and laughed a little nervously. “Do let’s go. It’s so hot here!” She fanned herself.
“I do second that idea.” Richard sighed, taking Julie’s arm. “I detest this place already!” he said disparagingly as he stared around them.
Trilby was feeling sicker by the second. She clung to her friend Sissy’s arm. Sissy looked at her with vague sympathy, but there was no time to talk now.
Ben helped Sissy and Julie into the rented touring car while Jack Lang struggled with the luggage. Neither of the visiting young men seemed willing to put themselves out in any way. As Trilby watched, she tried to imagine Thorn letting her father shoulder that weighty burden. It irritated her that she couldn’t.
The last straw came when Richard elected to ride not with Trilby but with his cousin and sister and brother. Trilby was heartbroken, and tried not to show it. Mary knew. Her smile was meant to be reassuring, but Trilby only felt like crying. All her hopes had been pinned on this visit. Nothing had changed at all. Only the scenery in which Richard smiled politely and looked right through her.
The ride back to the ranch was long and tiresome. Trilby sat rigidly beside her mother and father while Teddy sprawled in the backseat. Richard had put a leisurely arm around Julie when they got into the rental car. It was still there, Trilby noticed as she looked back through the thick dust at the other car.
She’d looked forward to this visit for so long…and now she wondered if it wasn’t going to turn into a nightmare. Richard had been polite but nothing more. He certainly didn’t act as if he’d missed her in the months she’d been away.
They stopped at a crossroads when they were nearing the ranch, and a party of mounted men rode up around them. Trilby thrilled at the display of horsemanship. But it irritated her to realize that these were Los Santos riders—and their mocking, handsome boss was riding at their head.
“Thorn, how good to see you,” Jack Lang greeted him. “What brings you out this way?”
“We’re acting as escort,” Thorn said evasively. His eyes drifted from Trilby to the front seat to the tall, handsome young man and other passengers in the car behind them and his eyes twinkled. He was getting a picture that relieved all his fears, even if Trilby did look as if her favorite dog had just died.
“There have been a few incidents on the border just recently,” Thorn added, “and news has gotten around about your Eastern visitors. I thought you might feel more comfortable if we were riding close by.”
“Indeed we will, and thanks.” Mary laughed. “Thorn, let me introduce you to our guests.” The cars stopped and she got out with Trilby. Thorn dismounted, and they walked back to the second car to make the introductions.
Trilby watched their reactions with interest. Sissy’s eyes were wide and curious as they darted around the dangerous-looking group of men. She saw the Apaches with Thorn and her eyes widened.
Sissy was fascinated with anthropology. She’d enrolled at a college up North where it was taught, and she was staying with a great-aunt and going to class. She was between quarters now and delighted to renew her old acquaintance with her friend Trilby.
It had fascinated her to learn about other cultures, but her primary interest was in Apaches. Her professor knew a great deal about them and had loaned her books and articles about them. She’d read every scrap of information she could find in the library, as well, but here was a live specimen at hand. Not only alive—but so masculinely beautiful to look at that she felt her heart turn over.
The man was tall. You could tell, she thought, by the length of his stirrups and the size of his horse. He had long black hair down to his shoulders, straight hair with the sheen of a blackbird’s plumage, thick and faintly windblown, with a thick, colorful band of cloth around his forehead holding it in place. He was well made, very strong-looking—from his broad chest in its blue-checked shirt to his long, powerful legs in high-topped moccasins that came to t
he knee. He was wearing leggings, but his bronzed, muscular thighs were bare under them. His hands were crossed over the pommel of his saddle and they were beautiful. Her eyes lingered on the long, tanned fingers.
But his face was the real work of art. He had high cheekbones and an arrow-straight nose. His eyes were large and deep-set and very brown. His mouth was oddly thin for an Indian’s, and he had a square jaw and a high forehead. She thought as she studied him that she could have spent the rest of her life just looking at him.
Naki was all too aware of the white woman’s fierce regard, but he pretended not to notice it or her. Apaches considered it very bad form to pay too much attention to women in public. Their rigid code of morals had many taboos in that respect. Despite his education and the time he spent in the company of whites, he was very Apache in his attitudes.
But he noticed the white woman, all right. She was slender and tall and not too bad to look at. She wore glasses. He wondered if that meant she was intelligent. He sometimes felt starved for a little educated conversation. He’d loved his late Mexican wife, but her vocabulary was limited to simple talk about themselves and the world around them. She had no education at all. He wondered what it would be like to sit and talk with a woman about the writings of Poe or Thoreau. He laughed inwardly. This woman was probably as frightened as she was fascinated. She probably thought of him in the white man’s usual stereotype: the poor, pitiful, ignorant savage. He enjoyed playing that role, for no other reason than to see the look on the faces of his victims when he began quoting Thucydides or Herodotus, or spouting nineteenth-century British poetry.
“Excuse me, Mr. Vance,” Sissy interrupted softly, her green eyes huge behind her small wire-rimmed spectacles. “But…is he Apache?” she asked, nodding toward Naki.
“Yes, he is. Don’t worry, the Apaches aren’t hostile these days, despite the horror stories they may have told you on the train coming out here,” Thorn said reassuringly. He motioned to Naki, who rode forward. The Apache looked regal somehow with his bronzed, handsome face like a death mask. But the dark eyes that glanced off Thorn’s twinkled with unholy mischief. “This is Naki.” Thorn introduced the man to the slender, blue-dressed girl from back East. “Naki, this is Miss Sissy Bates. She’s from Louisiana.”