“Is there much chance of a treaty?” Angela asked, stooping to enter the wickiup.
“I don’t know,” Matt replied as he followed her through the low door.
Angela straightened up, then swayed on her feet. The grass walls of the wickiup swam before her eyes.
“Angela!” Matt grabbed for her and steadied her before she could fall. “Are you all right?”
“Just…dizzy,” she murmured, leaning against him. It felt good to lean against him, feel his warmth, his strength surrounding her.
Matt picked her up and carried her to the bed. “You’re still weak. I shouldn’t have kept you up so long.”
Angela closed her eyes as he placed her on the bearskin. After a few minutes, the dizziness passed. When she opened her eyes, Matt was kneeling next to her, a worried look on his face.
“I’m okay, really,” she said. “I guess I’m an awful lot of trouble, aren’t I?”
“Yeah,” he said with a grin. “But don’t worry about it. You just lie there and rest. I’ll see about something to eat.”
Angela groaned when he came back a few minutes later with more of Huera’s horrible tasting broth, but insisted on sitting up and feeding herself this time.
After the first few mouthfuls, Angela began to eat faster, then started laughing. “Heaven help me, I think I’m starting to like this stuff.” She smiled up at Matt, then her breath caught in her throat when their eyes locked. His gaze was so intense she couldn’t look away, didn’t want to.
Finally, after an eternity, his lips curved up. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh.”
Angela felt her cheeks heat up and knew another adolescent blush covered her face. “It is?” she whispered, still staring at him.
“I like it.”
Angela felt another flush, and knew her face had turned an even deeper shade of red. Her heart pounded against her ribs. She wondered if she’d be dizzy again. If so, it wouldn’t be from her wound this time, she knew.
Good heavens! How could she react so strongly to a man she barely knew? She’d been around men every day of her life, waiting on customers in the store, but none had ever affected her in the slightest…until Matt Colton. But then, she’d never shared with them what she’d shared with him.
Stop it! she told herself. That’s over and done with and won’t happen again. It was a mistake.
Matt tore his gaze away and resumed eating. Later, he helped Angela out of her dress, much to her embarrassment. She slept in her chemise, the only garment she had left besides the blue gingham. Without her petticoat, which had been torn up in stages to use as bandages, and her drawers, which she’d lost that night they’d been ripped off her, she felt positively naked.
More tired than she realized, she fell asleep quickly.
Matt waited until she was sound asleep before he joined her on the bearskin. He lay next to her, gazed at her lovely face, her silky hair that looked like a mixture of daisies and moonbeams, and remembered their incredible wedding night. His loins tightened. There had been a few passionate women in his life, but they all paled next to his Angel. He knew she was even more passionate without the drug, then cursed himself for even thinking of it. He’d sworn to leave her alone.
It wasn’t going to be easy.
But it wasn’t going to be for long, either, he vowed.
Chapter Fourteen
The next morning Huera brought them corn cakes and honey for breakfast.
“I feel like a worthless ninny,” Angela said after Huera left.
Matt laughed. “Why’s that?”
“I see the other women working all day, and here I sit. If it wasn’t for Huera, we’d probably both have starved by now,” she said, dipping a golden brown cake into the honey pot. “She’s even been doing my laundry. It’s not fair. She has enough to do, I’m sure, without taking care of me.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Matt said. “She understands. When your arm’s better you can help her cook. In a day or two, when you’re stronger, we’ll take Huera into the woods and get some more honey. She’ll like that.”
“Matt! Matt!” Pace barreled into the wickiup, out of breath from running. “Taglito’s coming!”
Matt sucked in his breath sharply. He jumped up, his heart thumping with eagerness. “Are you sure?” As far as Matt knew, Tom Jeffords, known to his Chiricahua friends as Taglito, hadn’t been to the stronghold in years.
“Yeah, I’m sure. Last night the trail guards spotted a ring of five fires, and this morning they recognized Taglito.”
“I’ll be damned!” Matt clenched his fists at his sides, excitement surging through him. “Five? Who’s with him?”
“There’s Taglito,” Pace began, counting on his fingers. “Then there’s two bluecoats, and two Apaches—Army scouts, probably. Cochise’s goin’ down into the hills to meet ‘em. He wants you to come too.”
“What about Tahza and Naiche?”
“They didn’t come back with him. They’re still out hunting somewhere. Cochise is taking Juan, Nali-Kay-deya, Tesal-Bestinay, and you.” Pace’s mouth twisted down at the corners in disappointment. “The rest of us have to stay here.”
“Do you have time to do something for me, or has he got you running errands, as usual?” Matt asked.
“No, I’ve got time. Whacha need?”
“I need you to saddle the pinto for me and bring him here. Would you do that?”
“Dá'ndiide. Sure. Anything else?”
Matt shook his head, his mind already rushing forward. “Just holler when you get back.”
When Pace was gone, Matt turned to Angela. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“I’m fine. What’s going on? Who’s Taglito?”
“You don’t feel weak or anything do you? Dizzy?”
“No, of course not. Why?”
“I hate to keep bringing this up,” Matt said, ignoring her question, “but remember the promise you made about not telling anyone how you came to be here?”
Angela gave up eating and laid her corn cake aside. “How can I forget, when you keep reminding me all the time? Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or not?”
Matt paced the narrow confines of the wickiup and absently fingered the bear claws hanging around his neck. “Aside from my father and me, Taglito is the only white man Cochise has ever really known. He and Cochise are good friends—closer than some brothers. If Taglito’s bringing soldiers here, the only thing I can think is that it has to be some sort of peace mission.” He stopped and looked directly at her as she rose.
“That’s why I brought up your promise again. It’s more important now than ever.” He grasped her shoulders tightly. He had to make her understand. “I can’t begin to tell you what this means, Angela. Nothing is more important than that Cochise and his people make peace with the United States. Nothing! Not you, not me, not anything else in the world. I’ve been praying for this for ten years. You’ve got to swear to me you won’t say a word to these men about how you got here. Swear it.”
“Matt, you’re hurting me.”
He quickly let go of her shoulders, then took a deep breath and clenched his fists at his sides. “Swear it.”
“I’ve already sworn it a dozen times,” she said, rubbing her shoulders where he’d gripped her. “But if it’ll make you feel any better, I’ll swear it again.”
Matt stared hard at her for a long moment, studying the look in those bright green eyes. Could he trust her? Did she realize the enormity of what was at stake? She couldn’t. She couldn’t understand. Not the way he did.
But she would keep her word. He read that truth in her eyes. This was his Angel. He could trust her. He had to. Forcing himself to relax, if only a little, he took her by the hand. “All right, let’s go.”
Angela resisted. “If you trust me so little that you think I won’t keep my word, why don’t you just leave me here? That way I can’t say anything.”
“No.” A sudden coldness seeped down his spi
ne. “I can’t leave you here alone, not after what happened to you in the woods.”
“I won’t go in the woods, I’ll stay right here till you get back. All the men will be off playing or hunting or something, as usual, so there won’t be anyone around but women. I’ll be perfectly safe.”
“No. You’re coming with me.”
“Why? Why can’t I just stay with the women?”
Matt took a deep breath to calm himself and grasped her hand more tightly in his. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, because I didn’t want you to worry, but I guess you need to know.”
“Need to know what?”
He took another deep breath and ran his thumb over the back of her hand, forcing himself to loosen his grip, marveling at the smoothness of her skin. “I went back to where I found you in the woods, to look for tracks. They’d been wiped out—even yours. Someone was being careful. But whoever it was wasn’t careful enough.”
“You found something?”
He saw her shiver, felt it through their joined hands, and tightened his fingers around hers. “I found part of a footprint.”
“And?”
“And…“He swallowed heavily, his heart full of remorse as he met her questioning gaze. “It was too small to belong to a man, and any boy that small would be too young to do something like that. That means whoever attacked you was a woman.”
Angela gasped. “Couldn’t it have been my footprint?”
“No. Whoever it was wore moccasins.”
“But who could it have been? Who would want to kill me?” she cried, confused, obviously frightened. He couldn’t blame her. He was frightened for her. “All the women I’ve met have been so nice to me,” she said.
“I don’t know who it was. That’s why you’re not staying here alone. You’re coming with me.”
Angela agreed wholeheartedly. After what he’d just told her, she wasn’t about to stay in camp without him.
Pace brought the pinto. Matt lifted Angela to the saddle, then mounted behind her. They rode out with Cochise, his two wives, and his brother, Juan.
It wasn’t nearly so scary being on top of a horse this time, Angela realized. Maybe she was getting used to it. But she would have felt a whole lot better about it if Matt had worn some clothes. For heaven’s sake! She was sitting on the front flap of his breechcloth!
Naiche, Cochise’s youngest son, must have just returned from his hunt, for he joined them as they were leaving camp. Matt explained that Naiche would ride ahead to make sure it wasn’t a trap, then they would follow him. Cochise trusted Taglito completely, but he’d never had any reason to trust bluecoats. They could have forced Taglito to bring them. There might be more soldiers on the way. It wasn’t likely, but it was possible.
Angela did her best to concentrate, knowing Matt expected her to understand what was happening. But it wasn’t easy, what with his bare chest pressed against her back, his heart thudding against her ribs, his thigh rubbing the back of hers, his arms wrapped around her. It all felt so familiar…so right…and made thinking difficult.
But when she realized what Matt was saying she straightened abruptly. “Cochise sends his own son into a possible trap?” Angela was shocked. She had the impression Cochise had more integrity than that.
“It’s safe enough for Naiche,” Matt said. His right hand released the reins and rested on the knee she had wrapped around the saddle horn, while his gaze remained on the trail.
The gesture, the touch, seemed totally unconscious on his part, and for some reason she didn’t understand, Angela felt like smiling.
“None of the soldiers will know he’s Cochise’s son, and Taglito would never tell them if it would cause Naiche harm. It’s really just a formality. Besides, the only thing the Army could accomplish by harming Cochise’s son would be an all out war, and they don’t want that any more than the Chúk’ánéné do.”
“But what if they took Naiche and held him hostage?” she managed. Heat radiated from his hand on her knee, making thought and speech difficult. “Couldn’t they force Cochise to surrender?”
“They tried something like that back in sixty-one,” Matt said, his thumb brushing absently along the inside of her knee.
Angela shivered and barely held her train of thought. “What happened?”
“Some shavetail lieutenant fresh out of West Point invited Cochise into Apache Pass and tried to arrest him for something he hadn’t done. Cochise made the mistake of believing the U. S. Army would honor the flag of truce the good lieutenant was flying, and took one of his brothers, a couple of nephews, a woman—I don’t remember who she was—and a couple of kids.”
Matt’s thumb caressing her inner knee jerked to a halt as he seemed to finally realize what he was doing. He gripped the reins tightly in both hands. Angela breathed a sigh—was it relief, or regret?—and once again concentrated on his words.
“When Lt. Bascom ordered them all arrested, Cochise managed to escape, but the others weren’t so lucky. Bascom held them hostage, so Cochise went out and got his own hostages. Neither side would give in, so Cochise killed his hostages, and Bascom hung Cochise’s brother and nephews.”
“How horrible!” She grew chilled at the thought of such violence. “What happened to the woman and the children?”
“Bascom eventually let them go.”
“What did Cochise do then?”
“He went to war. He started raiding supply trains, stagecoaches, farms, ranches, you name it. And he didn’t stop until just over a year ago. Ten years, all those people killed—red and white—just because some idiot from back East wanted to make a name for himself by capturing an Apache chief.”
“You think the war could have been prevented, if it hadn’t been for that Lt. Bascom?”
“Oh, probably not,” Matt replied with a trace of sadness. “There were too many whites moving in and taking the Apaches’ land, running off their game, leaving those who were here first with barely enough to make it through the winter.” He closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. “No, I guess it was inevitable. But we’ll never know, will we?”
Angela longed to offer words of comfort to ease him, yet the very idea confused her. She shook the notion away. “Whatever happened to the lieutenant?”
“Bascom?” Matt grunted. “He got what everybody thought he deserved. The Army thought he deserved a promotion, so they made him a Captain about a year later. Not too long after that, I heard he finally got what the Apaches thought he deserved. He got killed in the War Between the States.”
They’d been riding slowly, giving Naiche time to go ahead. Now Naiche signaled to come on, so Cochise motioned the party forward. They arrived at the campsite a few minutes later. Matt lifted Angela to the ground, and she watched Cochise embrace a tall, older man with red hair and beard. They greeted each other like old friends.
“Taglito?” she asked Matt.
“Uh huh.”
“Let me guess,” she whispered. “Does his name have anything to do with his red hair?”
“You’re learning,” Matt said with a chuckle. “It means Red Beard.”
With a quick grin and nod, Tom Jeffords acknowledged Matt’s presence. For an instant Jeffords let his mind wonder who the white girl was, then he dismissed the question as unimportant. He had business to attend to. Important business.
It was with a great deal more self-control than Jeffords ever realized he had that he held himself in check. He knew he had to give this occasion the seriousness it was due, but it was a struggle to keep from jumping and shouting and laughing in his excitement. For Cochise himself to ride out to greet them, knowing his friend Taglito had brought a bluecoat “star chief,” meant Tom’s hunch had been right—Cochise was ready to talk peace!
Nervous now and trying with all his might not to show it, Tom Jeffords introduced Cochise to General Oliver Otis Howard. The two powerful leaders, one tall, strong, muscular, the other shorter, older, one-armed, shook hands in the white man’s fashion. Or as close
to it as possible, since Howard’s missing arm was his right one.
The two leaders greeted each other in Spanish. But since “Buenos días, jefe Cochise,” was the extent of Howard’s Spanish, Tom acted as interpreter for them.
General Howard, through Tom, told Cochise he’d been sent by President Grant specifically to talk peace with the Chiricahua.
“No one wants peace more than I do,” Cochise said.
“Then, sir,” Howard replied, “let us make peace.”
Tom Jeffords felt his heart whack against his ribs. Hot diggity! Here we go.
“My people have been at peace for more than a year,” Cochise said. “Our horses are poor and few. We could have had more by raiding, but this we did not do.”
General Howard nodded his head and pursed his lips. “There’s a place where you could live much better than you do now, a big reservation on the Rio Grande.”
“I’ve been there,” Cochise said. “I’ve seen that country, and I like it, but it is too far from our home. If that’s the only way for us to have peace, I will go there, but many of my people will not. It will break up our tribe.”
The tall Apache chief looked the shorter, one-armed man directly in the eye and spoke earnestly, yet with great dignity. “Why not let us stay here, and give us the place you call Apache Pass? Give us that, and we will protect it. I will personally see that no one is harmed or robbed by any Indians, even those of other tribes.”
“Perhaps we could do that,” Howard said, obviously surprised by the idea. He seemed to think it over a moment, then went on to talk about the reservation on the Rio Grande.
But Cochise was no longer interested in living there. “Why keep us on a reservation?” he asked. “When we make peace, we will keep it and honor it. Why won’t we be allowed to go around as free Americans? When you made peace with Mexico, you did not keep Mexicans on a reservation. You allow them to live wherever they want. They can travel freely. Why not let us do the same?”
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