Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  God, was she hearing any of this? Did she even care?

  “What I’m saying is, if you want to leave, I won’t stand in your way. I know this isn’t—I know I’m not the kind of man you wanted to spend the rest of your life with. Hell, I’m no warrior. I’m damn sure nobody’s hero.”

  Spence dropped his head to rest on their joined hands. His throat ached, his eyes burned, his heart felt like it was being wrenched from his chest. It took him a moment to realize the moisture on his hands was coming from his eyes, but when he realized that for the first time in his adult life, he was crying, he couldn’t make himself care.

  His voice ragged with grief, he went on. “If you want to leave, go live somewhere else…it’s your decision, Risa. I won’t try to stop you. But God, I want you to stay. If you leave me, I don’t know how I’ll live. I love you so much, I hurt with it. Just wake up. That’s all I ask. Just wake up, please. I took away all your hope, I know that. Give me a chance to give it back. If it means watching you walk away from me, I’ll do it. I swear, LaRisa. Just don’t die.”

  Gray mist swirled before her, around her, through her. Ahead, a bright circle of light awaited, a warm, welcoming beacon in the darkness. The Beyond. The Land Where the Cottonwoods Stand in Line. She drifted closer to it, to the faces she saw waiting there.

  Her father. Not thin and wasted by illness, as she’d last seen him, but strong and healthy, a virile warrior in his prime. At his side was a beautiful woman whose eyes beseeched her.

  Shimá?

  Yes. Although LaRisa had no real memory of the beloved face, had not seen it since she was four years old, she knew in her heart that this woman was her mother. She was so beautiful! LaRisa’s heart pounded with eagerness to be with both of them again.

  “What do you here, child?” her parents asked her.

  I’ve come to be with you.

  “Have you? Is this truly what you wish?”

  I…

  She had thought to say yes, but there was that other voice. Strong and deep and full of pain and love. It called to her, urged her back through the darkness toward the light on the other side. But there was pain on the other side. Pain and heartache. And Spence. It was his voice calling her. He wanted her back, and she wanted to go, but…

  “Think hard, child. Once you cross over, you can never go back.”

  Never? She would have to leave Spence forever? I don’t think I can do it.

  “Then do not try, child,” her mother said soothingly. “There will be time later for you to come to us. We will still be here. A man waits for you. A good man.”

  Yes. He is a good man. He was pulling her back by his sheer need, his implacable will. I cannot come to you, my mother, my father. I must go back to him.

  “Then go, child,” her father told her. “Go back to your valiant warrior.”

  Yes. I will go back. I must go back.

  It was the most natural thing to Spence, when the cool fingers touched his face, to turn his head and bury his lips in her palm. The fingers flexed against his cheek and touched his tears.

  Spence’s heart slammed against his sternum. She’d moved her hand! He jerked his head up and found her watching him solemnly. His breath backed up. “Risa! Thank God, LaRisa. Thank God.” He clutched her hand tighter and brought it to his lips. “Oh, God, Risa, I’ve been so scared.”

  She traced a trembling finger down his cheek, and her eyes widened in confusion and horror. “Spence, you’re…crying.”

  He wiped his face against his sleeve and tried for a smile. “Thinking I was going to lose you—But then, I guess I still might lose you. Thinking you were going to die does that to me.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Die?”

  “Don’t you remember? The flash flood in the ravine?”

  LaRisa’s eyes widened. The memory of terror was there as she shuddered. “I remember. I was going to drown, and then you were there with me.” An incautious movement brought a moan to her lips.

  “Easy, honey, don’t move around. You’ve been hurt, but you’re going to be fine. You can’t move your arm because I’ve bandaged it to your side so you won’t move the shoulder that was dislocated. Don’t try to move your foot, either. It’s not broken, but it’s badly bruised and sprained.”

  She tried to take a deep breath and winced. “My ribs?”

  “The bottom four on the right side of your back are cracked. I’ve bandaged them. I know you’re in pain, but you’re going to be all right, honey, I swear it.”

  Her eyes filled with doubt. “But you just said…you might still lose me.”

  “Not from your injuries. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

  She swallowed. “Then why…why did you think I was going to die if my injuries aren’t serious?”

  With a hand that trembled, Spence smoothed the hair back from her face. Her skin was so soft, and warm now, full of life. “You hit your head on a rock. You’ve been in a coma for six days.”

  “Six days?”

  “Shh. You’re going to be all right now. You just need a lot of rest. When you’re feeling better, we’ll talk.”

  She searched his eyes carefully, trying to see past the thin barrier he’d thrown up to hide his anguish. “About why, now that you know I’m not dying, you think you still might lose me? How can you lose me?”

  “Why don’t we talk about it tomorrow, when you’re stronger?”

  The familiar look of stubbornness came into her eyes. “Why don’t we talk about it now? How are you going to lose me?”

  Spence hung his head and gathered his strength. It was one thing to be magnanimous when she was unconscious. Now he had to prove to both of them that he’d meant all those things he’d said to her earlier.

  He took a deep breath, raised his head, and looked her in the eye. “You might leave me.”

  Her eyes darkened. “Where would I go?”

  He swallowed. “Anywhere you wanted. I…I never told you, but I wrote to Captain Pratt several weeks ago about what happened to you while he was gone. I got a letter from him yesterday. Prune Face has been fired, and you have a job at Carlisle if you want it. If not, word came this morning that the tribe will be moved to Fort Sill soon. You might want to try it there. Or you might want to go somewhere else. If you want to go, LaRisa, I won’t try to stop you. I won’t stand in your way anymore.”

  “How…how would I go? How would I live?”

  “There’s money. Five hundred dollars, with more if you need it, in a bank account with your name on it. I…I should have told you sooner, but…I was afraid you would use it to leave me.”

  “Why would I leave you?”

  Spence gave a harsh laugh and arched his neck back. “Why wouldn’t you? Why should you stay? You’re miserable here. Did you think I didn’t notice how unhappy you’ve been? Then the other morning, that business about the blood on my shirt. God, LaRisa, I never meant to rob you of your dreams. I never meant to make you unhappy. I just…I more or less forced you to come to Tucson with me because I couldn’t stand the thought of being without you. But I don’t want to own you—I want to belong to you. I don’t want to tie you down or tame you. I want to be wild and free with you. I don’t want to lose you because you’re my life and I love you more than I ever thought possible. I want you in every way a man can want a woman. But the most important thing I want is your happiness. If you can’t find it with me, then, as much as it kills me to say it, I’ll do my best to help you find it someplace else.”

  LaRisa stared at him in wonder. All the things she had realized while trapped in the ravine and waiting for death to take her rose up inside of her. She loved him. He was her life, her dream. And now he was saying…“You said…something about…love?”

  He met her gaze squarely, and it was there in his eyes, more love than any woman had a right to. “Yes. I said I love you. I’ve loved you so long, it’s hard to know when it started, but I was so stubborn and so determined to live my life alone, that it took
me a long time to realize it. But now I know exactly how I feel about you. I love you, LaRisa.” He squeezed her hand. “I love you. I never meant to hurt you this way.”

  “I think,” she said in a thin voice, “that I hurt myself. You didn’t take anything from me that I haven’t willingly given.”

  “I know…” He paused, then went on, his eyes closed. “I know I’m not the warrior you dreamed of, but if you decide to stay with me, I swear to God I’ll do everything in my power to make you happy.”

  “But you’re wrong, Spence. I accused you of stealing my dream, but you didn’t. You are the warrior I’ve been waiting for all my life. You didn’t steal him, you are him.”

  Spence shook his head. “I’m just a man, Risa. A man who needs you more than he needs air to breathe. I’m nobody’s warrior.”

  “But you are. Every day of your life you fight the most important battle on earth—the fight against death. You’re the strongest, most honorable man I’ve ever known. You’ve always taken care of me, treated me with respect, protected me even when I thought I didn’t want it. I love you, Spencer Colton. If I ever leave here, it will be to follow you wherever you go.” Her eyes misted, and she let the tears fall. “I love you.”

  Hope lit his brilliant blue eyes. “I’m still no warrior.”

  She smiled at him with all her love. “Ah, but there are warriors, and then there are warriors. And you are mine.”

  Fierce joy squeezed Spence’s heart. Careful of her injuries, he wrapped an arm around her hips and held her tight. “I love you. I love you more than you’ll ever know.”

  But she did know, suddenly, surely, fully. And in the deep quiet of the night, over the faint sound of crickets outside and the ticking of the mantle clock in the small parlor, she heard the most wondrous of sounds.

  “Listen,” she whispered.

  Spence raised his head. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Here.” She pressed his head against her breast. “There. Do you hear it?”

  “I hear your heart beating. I’ve never heard a more beautiful sound in my life.”

  But it wasn’t the beating of her heart that LaRisa heard. What she heard was much more elemental, much more important than a mere heartbeat. She heard what she had despaired of ever hearing, yet here it was, strong and clear, filling her with a glorious headiness too strong to contain.

  She heard a song from deep inside, and it came straight from her heart.

  THE END

  Author’s Note

  It has been more than one hundred years since Spencer Colton contracted malaria while serving the Chiricahua in Alabama. He did not know, as he stood beside Chee’s grave, that his joke about mosquitoes being responsible for malaria was true. It was several years later before Dr. Walter Reed discovered that malaria and yellow fever were indeed contracted from the bite of certain mosquitoes. As I write this, in the spring of 1994, there is still no cure in sight. Modern medicine has ensured that the disease is not as deadly as it once was, but it is once again on the rise. Just a few weeks ago the media announced that medical science has found what they believe to be a possible vaccine to prevent malaria, but there are not sufficient funds with which to conduct tests.

  It has also been one hundred years since the Chiricahua Apaches were finally moved to Fort Sill, Indian Territory. They arrived in October of 1894. The prisoners took the train from Alabama, but the rails ended at Rush Springs. The last thirty miles to the fort were made by wagon.

  For the first time in eight years, the Chiricahua could see mountains. Not big mountains, like in their homeland, but mountains, nonetheless. They saw a great huge sky and mile after mile of wide open land. They saw clear water, deer, mesquite! The wind carried the welcome scent of sage. It wasn’t home, but it was close.

  Before reaching Fort Sill, the prisoners had to camp in the open for one night along the trail. While gathered around the fire excitedly discussing this new land, they heard a sound. A night sound. A sound of home. For the first time in eight years they heard the clear, plaintive call of coyotes. The women wept for joy.

  Even Pace Colton, who had never gone more than a few weeks at a time without hearing coyotes, was moved by the women’s tears. He went to Fort Sill with the tribe so that his stepbrother, Matt, could go home to Arizona. Things between Pace and Matt were improving. The two were on the verge of becoming brothers again, until Pace fell in love with the one woman guaranteed to destroy the newfound peace. She was beautiful, she was spirited, she was forbidden. She was…

  Ah, but that’s another story. The next time we meet over a campfire, you and I, we’ll share another cup of coffee and I’ll tell you the story of Pace Colton, the half-breed Apache known as Fire Seeker, and the flame that lights his life. A flame of prophecy, of passion, of love. A flame of courage and strength. An Apache Flame.

  All my best,

  Janis Reams Hudson

  Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1996 by Janis Reams Hudson

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com

  First Diversion Books edition October 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-461-5

  Land of Flame

  Wild and free,

  the land endures.

  Those who fear it, abuse it,

  find death.

  Those who understand it,

  who treasure it,

  grow strong.

  A harsh land.

  A giving land.

  It gives peace to tortured souls.

  Warmth to frozen hearts.

  The fires of destiny burn here

  in this Land of Flame.

  —jrh

  Prologue

  Sierra Madre Mountains

  September, 1877

  It wasn’t the hunger that was going to kill him, it was the blizzard. Any self-respecting Apache could go three days without food. He was supposed to fast, after all. That was the point of his traipsing alone into the Mother Mountains with nothing but breechcloth, moccasins, and blanket. He could not join the ranks of the warriors until he’d completed his four-day fast and received his vision.

  As visions went, the only thing he’d seen in hours was snow. The world was reduced to a solid swirl of deadly white. Carried sideways by the sharp wind, the snow bit and stung at every exposed inch of flesh and sliced through his thin blanket like a lance through water.

  No shelter, save for this small cave that kept a portion of the wind off yet still allowed the gray ghost of an early winter to pile its snow around his huddled form. No food. No clothing. No warmth. No flint with which to strike a spark—no wood or brush to burn if he could. Only the cold. Only the bitter, freezing cold. Worse, much worse than any three-shirt weather he’d ever known, and he was a boy without even one shirt.

  He was going to die.

  Both sides of his heritage, white and Apache, protested. Death was no stranger to him, but he had not considered that it might seek him out so soon, this being but his fifteenth winter. Why he’d thought he should live longer, he didn’t know. Many didn’t.

  He couldn’t feel the cold any longer. He should be afraid, he supposed, but the only emotion he felt was sadness. He did not want to leave his family. His mother was the strongest woman he knew, but she would cry when he died. His brothers and sisters…Serena. He knew what Serena would feel, because he would feel the same if she died while he lived. It would be a deep, wre
nching pain, as if half her soul were being ripped away. They were alike in that, he and Serena. As twins, they shared the same thoughts, same feelings, even as they had shared the same womb before birth.

  No, he could not die. He could not condemn his sister to that kind of pain. Even their father who was not their father would be saddened. There was no man on earth the boy respected more than the man who had claimed him and Serena as his own when others scorned their very existence.

  No, the boy known as Pace Colton in the white world and as Son of Magic among The People could not die.

  As if laughing at his puny wishes, the ghost face of winter whipped another icy blast of snow through the small cave and piled it up around his huddled figure, a deadly reminder that what a man wishes, even a young determined man with everything to live for, meant nothing to the the will of Yúúsń or the all-powerful elements of nature.

  “Yúúsń, give me strength,” Pace prayed as he stared at the blanket of snow whistling past the cave. “Give me strength to endure what must be endured.” Be it the freezing cold, or death, he vowed to give a good accounting of himself. He would not cross over to the other side, would not meet his grandfather Cochise in the Land Where the Cottonwoods Stand in Line, crouched like a coward. He would stand and face his fate like the proud, strong warrior he had hoped to become.

  Yet again, the mother earth laughed at him. The ceiling of the cave was too low to allow him to stand, and in any case, his legs were too numb to hold him.

  He would kneel, then, to meet his fate. He was not ashamed to kneel before God. He unclasped his arms from around his knees and felt as though he were trying to move through a barrel of molasses. When he braced himself on the floor of the cave to push himself up, snow covered his hands, wrists, and halfway up his forearms. He barely felt its icy grip.