Mr. Roote sat on one of the straight chairs, and he leaped up when Carmela arrived.
“Hello. Thank you for seeing us. This is my wife, Bertha, and this is Lucy.” His sorrowful gaze rested on the girl.
Carmela smiled, trying for a friendly demeanor, but not too bright. “Good afternoon, Lucy. Mrs. Roote.”
Lucy gave the smallest of nods. Her mother, thin and somber in black, looked into Carmela’s face, her gaze pausing at her chin.
“Oh my. Thank heaven they didn’t …”
She didn’t finish, but turned away, flushing. Carmela knew what she was thinking. Thank God my daughter wasn’t given those ghastly tattoos.
Lucy wore her long, light brown hair parted in the middle. It lay loose about her shoulders and flowed down her back. Her mother’s hair, in contrast, was pulled back into a severe bun. Carmela couldn’t help thinking how pretty Lucy looked, and how young.
“You were with the savages longer than our Lucy,” Mr. Roote said.
Carmela said nothing, not wanting to agree with him.
His wife sat forward eagerly. “You have obviously been through a horrible ordeal. But you seem very calm now, and contented.”
What was it about her that made these people think she was content, Carmela wondered. She supposed it was because she had schooled her features into placidity, and because she willingly wore her hair and clothing in the style of the white women. Of course, they did not know her stylish dress was a castoff of Mrs. McCormick’s, kindly donated to replace her tattered traveling outfit.
“It takes a studied effort, every day,” she said. That was the pure truth. Each day she pleaded with God to help her through whatever came her way. Meeting Uncle Silas’s demands with grace, and his whims when it came to changing the program, adjusting her costumes, or adding new material to her speeches took great patience. She had learned that it was best to simply do what he asked, even when she doubted the wisdom of his ideas.
“Did it hurt when they put those marks on your face?” Lucy asked, staring unabashed at Carmela.
Carmela drew a sharp breath.
“Don’t be rude, dear,” Mrs. Roote said.
“It’s all right.” Carmela sat down in the rocker, and Mr. Roote resumed his seat. Had it hurt? She struggled with a truthful but credible answer. The worst pain had been the stiff neck she got when Uncle Silas made her hold still for ages while he renewed the ink. “Not a lot. It prickled some.”
Lucy nodded, still gazing at the tattoos.
Mrs. Finney hovered in the doorway. “Mr. and Mrs. Roote, I wondered if you would like to take tea with me in the dining room while the girls chat.” She smiled encouragingly at them.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Mrs. Roote looked sidelong at Lucy.
“That might be a good idea,” her husband said, rising. “Let them get acquainted.” He nodded at Carmela, as though they were conspirators.
“I’ll bring you girls something,” Mrs. Finney said, spreading her smile to Lucy.
Mrs. Roote looked at her daughter. “Will you be all right?”
“I’m fine, Mama.”
Mrs. Roote reluctantly followed her husband and Mrs. Finney out of the room.
“It really did hurt, didn’t it?” Lucy said, leaning eagerly toward Carmela. “You just said that so Mama wouldn’t be upset.”
“N–no, actually.” Carmela moved over to sit beside her on the settee. “It wasn’t very painful. The ink bothered me at first, but it doesn’t now.”
Lucy nodded, her eyes wide, still studying the markings.
“What about you?” Carmela asked. “Did the Apache hurt you?”
Lucy sobered. “Some. Not for long. I soon learned what they wanted of me.”
“What was that?”
“Obedience, same as here. And hard work, to help with the food.”
“Of course,” Carmela said. “It takes a great deal of labor to provide food for the tribe.”
“I didn’t mind that part.” Lucy raised her chin almost defiantly. “Once I got used to things and learned a bit of their language, they treated me like one of them. Like an Apache woman.” Her gaze held a challenge.
“Ah. And in what ways did they treat you like a woman? For the people I was with, that meant more work.”
“How old were you when they got you?” Lucy asked.
“I …” She couldn’t bring herself to say it, so she fell back on the answer she had given before. “I was twelve when my parents died.”
“When the Indians massacred them.”
Carmela said nothing but gave a little shrug.
“Well, obviously, they didn’t massacre my parents,” Lucy said. “I suppose I might have hated them more if they had.”
“What do you mean?”
Lucy met her gaze for a long moment. “I liked being an Apache. Once I learned the rules, I mean.”
“The rules?”
“Sure. You know. How they wanted me to behave. It wasn’t so bad. I liked it better than here. No weeding the garden all day long, and no school. And they didn’t make you wear all these tiresome clothes.” With a grimace, she ran her hand down her bodice and skirt. “Last summer, we girls wore short dresses and moccasins. Not stockings or petticoats and long skirts. And no threat of corsets, hey?” She smiled, and Carmela found herself smiling back into her winsome blue eyes.
“Well, there is that.”
Lucy laughed. “Do you ever feel like you want to go back?”
Carmela pulled away from her. “No, never.”
Sobering, Lucy cocked her head to one side. “They did hurt you, then.”
Carmela’s lips trembled. “Your father said … He told me you’ve run off since you came home.”
She nodded. “Some days I think I can’t stand it. Mama will set me to stitching, and it seems so useless. Or we stand for hours over the wash kettle, scrubbing clothes. The Apache don’t do that. And Pa’s planted corn again. I know what’s coming. I’ll be out there for hours and hours alone, hoeing.”
“I doubt he’ll leave you alone for long after what happened.”
“I hope he does. I hope they snatch me again.”
“No, Lucy.”
“Why not? They told me—if I’d stayed, they said I’d be married. That’s what they meant, anyway. I’d be a warrior’s woman by this time.”
Carmela gasped. “At your age?”
“Yes. But my folks say that’s disgraceful and I mustn’t tell anyone or even think about it. How can I not? They’ll keep me close until I’m an old maid.”
“You—you want to marry an Apache man?”
“It would be better than living here on the farm. I’d get to ride horses, and I don’t mean old plodders like that team my pa has. And we’d go swimming every single day when it was hot—without any clothes! And I could ride with my husband if he went to raid.”
“Surely not.”
“Some of their women go.”
“Not really?”
Lucy nodded. “I’ve seen it. I suppose they cook for the men. In fact, there was a woman in the party that snatched me last year.”
Carmela didn’t know what to say.
Lucy frowned. “It’s so freeing. You understand. How can you like it here, when you were with them for years? You were part of their family.”
She launched herself at Carmela, who caught her in her arms. Lucy sobbed once, then grasped handfuls of Carmela’s dress and sat up.
“I won’t cry. But I dearly want to go back. Tell me you understand.”
Carmela shook her head. “I don’t. I’m sorry, but I’ve never felt anything like that.”
“You wanted to come back to this world?”
Carmela sighed. “My parents and brother were dead, but yes, I wanted to go home. We didn’t live out here, like your family. We lived back East. That’s where I wanted to go.” To civilization, she thought. To hot baths and a soft bed and kind words. She wasn’t sure what she had expected when Uncle Silas retrieved her. Did she th
ink he would take her home to live with an aunt? That she would have cousins around her to play with each day? She had hoped to live with Grandma Wade, but her grandmother had died shortly after her family set out to join the wagon train. Still, she had believed without question that returning to the East would be better than the bleak wilderness around Fort Yuma.
How little she had known.
The army chaplain and his wife—Captain and Mrs. Owen—had treated her kindly. She now believed she would have been much better off with them than with her uncle. But savages? She couldn’t tell Lucy that was not an option for her, but she shuddered even thinking about it. How could this child look favorably on a life as an Apache woman?
“Dear Lucy.” She touched the girl’s tanned cheek. “My dear, you mustn’t think it would be all fun and play for you. I’m sure the women worked hard. Indian women must prepare food and animal skins. They do all the tedious jobs while the men hunt and raid.”
“The women here work harder,” Lucy insisted. “Look at my ma. Seven children, and I’m the oldest. When I’m not sewing or washing dishes or doing farm chores, I have to look after the little ones.”
Carmela sighed. “And you think it would be better with the Indians.”
Lucy blinked and then nodded. “Sometimes I just don’t feel that I fit in here anymore—in the white world. People have welcomed me back, but I know they look down on me and think I’m dirty somehow because I’ve lived with the Indians. The tribe never made me feel that way.”
“That part I understand.” Carmela had endured the looks of pity and speculation from the civilized people who paid to hear her speak. It hadn’t taken Uncle Silas long to catch on to the fact that the more sordid she made the tale, the more they wanted to hear. He made her say they had stripped her of all her clothing after they captured her from the wagon, and that she rode with them for two days wearing absolutely nothing. Her face always flushed crimson when she told that part. And Lucy had gone through it, or so her father said. Yet, she wasn’t resentful. She wanted to return to the tribe. Had a few short months with the Apache robbed her of all sense of decency?
“I knew it.” Lucy threw her arms about Carmela’s neck and clung to her.
Carmela talked to the girl for another ten minutes, probing gently about her captivity. It seemed Lucy had been treated fairly well. She had been with the Apache through summer and fall the previous year, when food was comparatively plentiful. She admitted the Apache were sometimes hungry while she was with them, and they made Lucy work hard with the other girls and women sometimes to gather and preserve food.
“It’s much worse in winter,” Carmela assured her. “You’re fortunate that the soldiers got you back before winter.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Lucy said. “We had put by an awful lot of food. Baskets and baskets full of dried meat and corn.” She gave Carmela a conspiratorial smile. “Some of it was stolen. That’s the easiest way to grow corn.”
“But think of the people from whom it’s stolen,” Carmela said. “They will suffer, too.”
Lucy frowned at that.
“What did you think last winter?” Carmela pressed. “You were in a warm house with people who love you. I don’t expect you missed any meals.”
“I felt like a prisoner.”
Carmela sighed. Was she getting anywhere?
“Some days I still think about running away and going back to the tribe,” Lucy said, watching her face. Looking for a reaction, Carmela surmised. “Please don’t do that. Lucy, your parents love you dearly. They want to understand you and help you.”
“I know, but it’s so hard. Mama fusses over me all the time. I can’t stand it.”
“You can.” Carmela held the girl’s hands and looked deeply into her eyes. “You can be an adult in this world, too, Lucy. But respect has to be earned. Yes, our ways are different from the Apache’s. Perhaps it’s not as exciting. But you belong here. You are loved here.”
She wasn’t sure Lucy believed her.
When Carmela took Lucy out into the dining room, Mrs. Finney tactfully left her with the parents while she took Lucy out to see the kittens her calico cat had birthed in the woodshed a week before. Mrs. Finney’s kittens were apparently much sought after by residents, as they grew up without fail to be excellent mousers.
“So what do you suggest we do?” Mr. Roote asked when Carmela had given them the gist of her conversation with Lucy, though not the details she felt they would find most painful.
“I’m not a mother, Mr. Roote, nor an expert in child-rearing, or even in returned captives. I know only what I have lived in my limited experience and what I have learned from others.”
“Go on,” said the anxious Mrs. Roote. “Anything you can tell us will be helpful.”
Carmela hoped it was so and sent up a silent prayer to God for that outcome.
“I know it’s hard, but perhaps you should allow Lucy more freedom. It’s not her fault that she now finds your life constricting. I know you have expectations for her, and that you hope she will turn into a proper young lady. That may never happen.”
Mr. Roote’s mouth worked, but he didn’t say anything.
“So long as she doesn’t shame us,” Mrs. Roote conceded, looking down at her empty teacup.
Carmela frowned. “And how would she shame you?”
“By running back to those heathens. By showing she prefers them over us. Or by running wild in the town.”
“I don’t see any Apache women running wild in Prescott,” Carmela said, though she had been there only two days and had no idea what happened on Whiskey Row after sunset.
Mrs. Roote sighed.
“You’re right,” Mr. Roote said. “If we don’t hold her so tight, maybe she’ll get used to us again. And maybe I can drive her out into the hills sometimes, though it’s dangerous.”
“She likes to ride horses,” Carmela said, “but your workhorses are too tame for her.”
“No!” Mrs. Roote twisted in her chair to glare at her husband. “You will not get her a horse. She’d be gone in a minute if you did.”
“There now, my dear.” Mr. Roote stroked his wife’s hand. “I don’t say I’ll get her a mustang. I think you are right about that. But we can be a little more slack about her clothes when she’s at home.”
“I won’t have her going about with no stockings or undergarments.” Mrs. Roote pulled away from him and folded her hands on the table before her. “It’s not Christian.”
“That’s the trouble, you see.” Mr. Roote’s sad eyes met Carmela’s gaze. “She acts as if she’s not Christian anymore, and it grieves us.”
Carmela’s lips trembled. She was way out of her depth here. “Does she follow the Apache gods?”
“I don’t know,” he replied.
“She reviles ours,” Mrs. Roote said bitterly.
“Have you spoken to the minister about it?”
“Many times.” Mr. Roote pushed back his chair. “I expect we’d best collect our daughter and head home. Thank you, Miss Wade.”
Carmela stood, as did the Rootes.
“I’m not sure I’ve helped her … or you.”
He clasped her hand for a moment. “Just talking about her with someone who doesn’t get all horrified is a help.” He looked at his wife. “Come on, Bertha. The cows won’t milk themselves.”
Carmela stood with Mrs. Finney on the front porch and watched them climb into their wagon.
“You look troubled,” Mrs. Finney murmured.
Carmela nodded. “I only hope they can find a way to live peacefully together and not regret Lucy’s return.”
Capter Fifteen
Marshal.” Silas Holden turned his pleading gaze on Duffield once more. “I can’t ride into a gunfight. I have no weapon, to start with, and I’m debilitated by this wound. I beg you to leave me here.”
“And bring your money back,” Benny said with a sour smile.
“That’s enough, Lassiter,” Duffield said with a disapproving
look.
Holden clutched his side. “Please. I think it’s bleeding again. I can’t go any farther.”
The marshal paused, frowning. After a moment he nodded. “All right. Ed, you stay with him, and keep your eyes open.”
“Right,” said Parker. He dismounted and walked over to Holden’s horse.
“They got a lot of money off that stage,” Holden said. “They took more than eight hundred dollars off me, Marshal. Robbed me while I was unconscious.”
“That so?” Duffield asked.
Freeland thought of all the people who had paid this charlatan good money to hear the lies he’d forced his niece to tell. That was how he saw it, but this wasn’t the time to share that information with the marshal. He wasn’t sure yet if exposing Carmela and her uncle’s fraud was best for Carmela. He didn’t want to make her life worse.
“Is it so wrong to want back the money I earned?” Holden’s brow furrowed as he leaned lower over the horse’s neck.
“Be glad they didn’t kill you,” Duffield said. “Ed.”
Parker stepped up and helped Holden ease down onto the ground. Freeland dismounted, unstrapped his bedroll, and carried it over to them.
“Here, you might as well use this.”
“Thank you.” Holden managed to put a remnant of his former dignity into his voice.
Freeland stooped to arrange the rolled blanket under his head.
“You said my niece is safe, McKay?”
“That’s right.”
“Where is she?”
Freeland met his gaze. Was the man truly concerned about Carmela, or was he just trying to keep track of his main asset?
“She’s at a respectable boardinghouse in Prescott. She’s waiting there for word from the marshal or me. To be honest, I didn’t expect we’d find you alive.”
“I was always resourceful,” Holden said, and Freeland didn’t doubt it. “Are you sure she’s all right?”
“Absolutely.”
My Heart Belongs in the Superstition Mountains Page 14