Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  Angela nodded reluctantly. She’d do what was necessary. Matt had explained that because of the peace negotiations, it was impossible to openly accuse Alope without causing serious problems. Since Angela could think of no better idea, Matt said this was their only choice.

  Some choice.

  Two hours after dark, Matt and Angela made their way through camp to pay a visit to Alope. Angela was grateful for the darkness. She hoped it hid her pale, bloodless face and trembling hands. Why in the world had she ever agreed to this?

  She had thought she would scream when Matt slipped the rawhide thong around her neck. Now the rattles from the tail of the snake hung between her breasts and made a faint whisper of sound with each step she took. And if that weren’t bad enough, the light brown snake skin, with its double row of darker brown spots, now encircled her forehead.

  Talk about primitive!

  But when they found Alope in her mother’s wickiup, all Angela’s misgivings disappeared and she was filled with devilish delight at the look on the other girl’s face. Alope was clearly stunned to see Angela at all, but when she recognized the necklace and headband for what they were, she was visibly shaken.

  “Duuda'!” Alope whispered as she backed away, her hand in front of her to ward off the evil. “Duuda'! Nuushkąą!”

  Angela ignored the words she didn’t understand. Her voice rang with confidence when she began the prearranged speech Matt had insisted upon. He said it would look more real if she spoke for herself, then he translated for Alope.

  “Please tell Alope I’m grateful for the gift of the snake,” she said, holding the basket toward the terrified girl. “Since we had some left over, I’d like to share the meal with her.”

  When Matt translated this last statement, Alope stifled a scream behind her hand and stumbled backward, her eyes nearly popping from her head.

  Angela took a step toward Alope and slipped the cover from the basket. Alope’s horrified gaze darted everywhere, as if seeking a quick escape. She refused to look into the basket.

  “Have you never tried it?” Angela asked. She was the picture of innocence, she was sure. “It’s really quite good.” She waited until Alope’s huge, terrified gaze reluctantly slid to the basket, then Angela tore off a small hunk of the cooked snake meat and brought it to her own lips. She popped the meat into her mouth and chewed with relish, then thrust the basket toward Alope again. “Try some,” she urged.

  Alope didn’t need a translation. She was stunned and horrified. Not only had her plan failed, but Bear Killer’s white she-devil of a wife must have used some sort of magic to avoid being struck by the gúú'. Powerful magic.

  Terror streaked along every nerve. Not magic. Witchcraft!

  Alope looked to Bear Killer for help. “Make her go away! Make her take that thing and go away!” she cried in Apache. She reached out and slapped the basket away, knocking it from Angela’s hand and spilling the meat to the ground.

  “Náhałá!” Matt ordered. “You pick it up! You are more evil than any snake for what you have tried to do. Be warned, you viper in woman’s skin. If anything happens to Eyes Like Summer Leaves, anything, you will pay. If she so much as stumps her toe on a rock, I will find you, and I will kill you. Hear me, Alope, for you know I do not lie.”

  “You did good,” Matt offered once he and Angela returned to their wickiup.

  Angela ignored his words of praise. She tore off the hideous necklace and headband and flung them against the grass wall. “Do you think it worked? Will she leave me alone now?”

  Matt came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, squeezing them gently. “Oh, it worked, all right.” He laughed. “She’s terrified of you now. You won’t have any more trouble out of her, I promise. Why don’t you get into bed? I need to talk to shimá and shitaa for a minute, but I won’t be gone long.”

  A few minutes later Angela tumbled gratefully to bed. The ordeal of finding the snake, then confronting Alope, had exhausted her, and she was asleep in moments.

  Matt told Hal-Say and Huera what had happened, and they agreed to keep their eyes open for any further trouble. When he returned to find Angela already asleep, he crawled in beside her. A sudden trembling seized him, and he had to clench his fists to keep from reaching out and crushing her in his arms. How had she come to mean so much to him in such a short time?

  If that rattlesnake had been facing just a few inches in the other direction…Matt’s mind refused to finish the thought.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Finally, ten days after General Howard’s arrival, the Chiricahua were in agreement.

  Cochise stood solemnly, his people behind him, the bluecoat “star chief” before him. The crowd quieted.

  “You came to us seeking peace,” Cochise said. “No one wants peace more than the Chidikáágu'. Over the seasons, for every one of us who has died, we have killed ten white men, but still the white men are no less, they are only more. The white man grows more numerous, while we, The People, grow fewer and fewer. If we do not have a good peace soon, we will disappear from the face of the earth.

  “If you can give us these mountains as our reservation, we will have peace. Hereafter, the white man and the Chiricahua will drink of the same water, eat of the same bread, and be at peace.

  “Nzhú! It is good!”

  General Howard nodded his agreement, and Taglito grinned at Cochise. Then the star chief brought up a new aspect of the treaty.

  “In order for this new reservation to be legal, so white men will honor it, you must have a white man as your agent, someone to be in charge of seeing that you get the food and supplies you have coming to you.”

  “There is no question,” Cochise said without hesitation. “Before you came, I knew three white men. Two of them are tied to their land and family. That leaves one. Taglito will be our Agent.”

  “Hold on there, amigo,” his old friend protested. “I don’t know the first thing ‘bout being an Indian Agent. I’m sure the general can find somebody else who’ll know what in tarnation he’s doin’.”

  “I’m sure he could,” Cochise replied. “But if we don’t have someone all the Chidikáágu' know and trust, there may be trouble. You would not want there to be trouble, would you?”

  Taglito grinned. “Are you threatening me?”

  “Me? We are like brothers, you and I. Would I threaten my own brother?”

  Tom Jeffords wasn’t eager to tie himself down to what he considered a “regular job” like Indian Agent. But he knew as sure as his mother’s eyes were blue that neither one of the Colton’s, Travis nor Matt, could leave their ranch to live on the reservation year-round. And Cochise was right. The Agent had to be someone Cochise and his people trusted.

  There were a few men Tom Jeffords trusted, but he trusted no one as much as he trusted himself. Hellfire. He had to do the job, and he knew it.

  With considerably less reluctance than he knew he should feel, he agreed to his old friend’s request.

  Angela felt a thrill shoot through her as she watched Cochise, chief of the Chiricahua Apaches, shake hands with General Oliver Otis Howard, representative of the President of the United States of America, and then with Tom Jeffords, Indian Agent for the Chiricahua Reservation.

  She reached out and squeezed Matt’s hand, and he returned the pressure. His eyes were suspiciously bright and he swallowed heavily, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

  When it was all over and the treaty was signed, the celebration started almost immediately. The story of the day’s events would be told around Apache campfires for generations. This day Cochise and the Chidikáágu' made peace with the white man!

  Tom Jeffords raised his hands for silence, then shouted an Apache phrase that brought a round of cheers. Matt translated for Angela: “Drink now, talk tomorrow.”

  The crowd concurred.

  Cochise had been strict about how much tiswin his men consumed each night…until now. He hadn’t wanted any drunken brawls to interfere wi
th making peace. But now there was peace. All restrictions were lifted. The women had been brewing tiswin and stocking it up for days. Tonight his warriors—should they call themselves that now that there was no more war? At any rate, tonight they would drink the camp dry. Tomorrow they would try to drink the stream dry.

  “Just look at this place!” Angela stared around her in amazement at all the feverish activity. The pace had been hectic, at least for the women, for days, but nothing compared to this. People ran back and forth, women checking the food, men racing their horses through camp, boys shouting, imitating the men, but on foot. “If God is looking down from the heavens, He must think this place is a busy anthill, with all this running around.”

  General Howard, walking next to her, clutched the Bible tucked under his belt and smiled. “God is most assuredly looking, Mrs. Colton. This treaty wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.”

  “Once again you agree with our people on something, General,” Chee said, walking on Howard’s other side.

  “How’s that, young man?”

  “Dee-O-Det, our shaman, dreamed one night that Yúúsń—God— would send us peace and let us keep our land. And then you came.”

  “No offense, but I had no idea the Apaches even knew about God,” Howard said, astounded at the idea.

  Chee smiled. “I know what white men think of us. But as far as we’re concerned, we’re much more religious than white men.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, for instance, most white men who even admit to being religious only admit it one day a week, if that often. We pray every day. Yúúsń told our people, way back at the beginning of time, to face the rising sun each morning and pray. You’ll notice the door to every wickiup faces east, for just that reason.”

  “Tell me more,” the General commanded.

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll take you to Dee-O-Det. You’ve not had the chance to talk much with him, and I think the two of you will like each other.”

  Chee and Howard left to find Dee-O-Det, and Angela went to help with the food. Matt hung around nearby to keep an eye on her. He still didn’t like having her out of his sight, even though no one had made any further attempt to bother her.

  That afternoon Angela saw a different Matt Colton. As the celebration progressed, the lines of tension in his face eased. His eyes glowed, his shoulders were straight for the first time in days, and he held his head high. He laughed and joked with those around him. He even smoked a cigarette with Chee. She’d never seen him smoke before. And he watched every move Angela made.

  She watched him, too. She knew he hadn’t had enough tiswin to account for this sudden buoyancy, and correctly attributed this new side of him to the just-signed treaty.

  Near sundown, Matt grabbed Angela by the arm and led her toward the edge of camp. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll see.”

  They climbed up a narrow path through the trees. Oak leaves and twigs crackled under foot and jays and sparrows took flight, scolding the intruders with every flap of their wings. Soon the woods gave way to rocks. A scraggly bush sprang from a crevice here and there, and from an occasional, deeper crevice a juniper or a scrub oak grew. After a short climb through the rocks, they emerged on a flat shelf. The entire rancheria was spread out below them. Overhead a red-tailed hawk soared in the waning sunlight.

  Angela craned her neck to look up at the tall rugged peak that loomed above them.

  “Signal fires are set up there,” Matt explained. “They can be seen for miles.”

  He led her around the base of that towering monolith to where another ledge hung, seemingly in mid-air. It felt like the edge of the world. It was the most peaceful place Angela had seen in her life. The shadows cast by the setting sun made black holes out of the deep crevices below them. It was a fearful place, yet wonderful. Only the wind and her heart moved.

  “Oh, Matt,” Angela whispered. “It’s so beautiful here.”

  He put his arm around her shoulder, obviously pleased with her reaction. She leaned against him, and together they watched the sun sink below the horizon.

  “It’ll be dark soon. Shouldn’t we head back now?”

  “In a minute. You haven’t seen the best part yet.”

  “The best part?”

  “Just wait,” he said. With his hand on her shoulder, he turned her around to face the east. Soon the sky began to darken. But before the dusk turned completely dark, a mysterious orange light glowed along the eastern horizon. It looked as though the sun had sped around in a hurry to rise again.

  Angela held her breath as she watched a huge red-orange disk rise and light the whole eastern sky. She was unaware of the bruising grip she had on Matt’s hand. She stared in wonder at a sight she’d never even heard of, much less seen.

  “It’s…incredible! It has to be the moon, but I’ve never seen anything like it!”

  Matt pulled her back against his chest and draped his arms around her. He rested his chin on the top of her head and they watched the moon break free of the horizon.

  “The Mexicans call it an Apache moon,” he said quietly, his deep voice rumbling in his chest and sending shivers through Angela’s body.

  “Why?”

  “Because this is the time of year when the Apaches usually raid below the border for horses. They say the moon is covered with the blood of their victims. Over in Texas folks call it a Comanche moon, because the Apaches aren’t the only ones who raid this time of year.”

  “How horrible.” Angela shivered, and Matt tightened his arms around her. “What’s the Chiricahua word for moon?”

  His answer was no more than a short series of grunts to her. She had yet to learn any of the language. She asked him to repeat it.

  He obliged with, “t'łéé'naa'áí,” then chuckled softly at her lame attempt to pronounce the word.

  They watched silently for a while, then Matt turned her in his arms. “The Apaches have another name for it,” he said softly, running an index finger along her jaw.

  His dark gaze held her captive. His touch sent her heart into an erratic dance. “They do?”

  “Uh huh.” Matt lowered his face until their breaths mingled and their lips almost touched. “They call it a lovers’ moon.”

  He tasted her lips and ran his tongue across her teeth. Angela melted instantly. Why does he affect me this way? she wondered. Then she was beyond wondering. Beyond thought. She was a mass of tingly sensations. She pressed herself against him, trying to get closer. He invaded her mouth with his tongue, and she tasted the tang of smoke and tobacco from the cigarette he’d shared with Chee earlier. With both hands, he brought her hips flush against his. The hard ridge of his arousal brought vivid pictures flashing behind her closed eyes. She moaned and moved against him. The kiss deepened and became fierce, demanding.

  Suddenly Matt tore his mouth from hers and buried his face in her hair where it draped across her shoulder. His harsh breathing seemed to echo in the stillness of the night, but Angela barely heard it over her own pounding heart.

  He ran his hands over her and clutched her tightly for a moment, then stepped back and took a deep breath. He reached out and smoothed a strand of hair from her cheek, and Angela’s eyes widened. His hand was trembling!

  Without a word, Matt took her by the hand and led her back around the base of the signal peak, across the flat shelf, down through the rocks, then woods, and back to camp. All the way down, she wondered what it would be like if they were really married. Would it be like it was just now up on that ledge? Would he always take her breath away? Would she always be able to make him tremble?

  They ate roast venison and Matt devoured her with his eyes. There’d been more than one comment made in the last couple of weeks about Matt rarely leaving Angela’s side. Tonight he took more ribbing because he refused to let go of her hand. Public demonstrations of affection between man and wife were not common among Apac
hes.

  Even as she grew more nervous with each hot look Matt gave her, Angela took pleasure in his ardent attention. But even so, his constant nearness made her as jumpy as a jackrabbit. She never knew what to expect from him. He promised her an annulment, then he’d do something like he did tonight, kiss her in a way that said he wanted more—a lot more. And make her want more.

  And she did want more.

  The rowdy crowd began to wear on her, as did the constant conversations all around her in a language she didn’t understand. She was tired. She was confused. And her lips still tingled from that blistering kiss. When Matt let go of her hand to gesture to one of his friends, she took the opportunity to slip away unnoticed and head for their wickiup.

  But her departure didn’t go unnoticed. Matt knew instantly when she left his side, and he turned to watch her go. He let her leave, but followed close enough to keep her in sight. He breathed easier when he saw her duck into the wickiup. He’d give her a little time to herself. Apparently she was as shaken by that kiss as he was.

  The question now was, what was he going to do about it?

  Chapter Nineteen

  Angela threw dried leaves and small sticks on the glowing embers. She fanned until the flames caught, then added a single short log to the blaze.

  It had been days since she’d had a chance to bathe. She didn’t know how much time she had before Matt would come, but she simply had to feel a cool damp cloth against her skin. She peeled off her dress and knelt beside the water jug after locating a rag to use for washing. She lowered her chemise to her waist and wet the rag.

  The cloth was cool. It soothed her heated flesh, but did nothing for the ache in her breast, put there by a longing for something…wonderful…some kind of life with Matt. Something impossible.

  She closed her eyes and wiped the valley between her breasts. A whisper of sound made her open her eyes. She froze. Crouched just inside the doorway, halted in mid stride with his mouth half open in surprise, was Matt.