Apache Summer

by Heather Graham

“Maybe I will keep you myself. You have so much to learn about manners.

  Maybe you are like a very fine horse to be broken, eh? A magnificent mare to be ridden and tamed, eh?” Tess struggled fiercely against him. He enjoyed her distress and continued to smile. She shouldn’t fight him, she thought.

  He enjoyed it so very much.

  But just as she went limp, a sharp female voice called out, “Chavez!”

  His features hardened. He did not release Tess, but turned around and stared at the dark-haired, buxom young woman coming toward him. She wore a white peasant blouse and a full, colorful skirt. Her brown feet were bare. She was young and pretty but her features were wide and her hips showed signs of broadening With age and the birth of children.

  She scowled furiously at Tess and scolded Chavez in Spanish.

  “Woman, shut your mouth!” Chavez roared at her. She did not stop talking until Chavez turned, his fist raised as if he would hit her. The woman fell silent, but her eyes were eloquent. Her look said that she hated Tess.

  “I am Chavez, and I will do as I choose!” he warned the dark-haired woman.

  He pushed Tess toward her.

  “Take her.

  Take her to the house. I will come shortly.”

  The woman put a hand on Tess’s shoulder. Tess shook free from her hand.

  “Don’t touch me!” she warned her sharply.

  “What a woman!” Chavez sighed, and Tess did not know if it was with mockery or pleasure. She gritted her teeth and stepped past the woman, striding toward a house she indi The dark-haired woman hurried behind her.. ~ The daylight was almost gone. By the glow of the fire, Tess tried to take measure of where she was. The rocks of the mountains rose all around them, but there were many trails that sprang from the clearing. She had no idea where they led, but if she could escape during the night, she could get some distance from Chavez.

  “Stop! You stop, you gringa slut!” the woman called out. Tess ignored her.

  She reached the house and threw open the door.

  There were just two rooms there. One was a kitchen with dirty shelves and boxes. Old liquor bottles, chipped and broken, lay upon a dirty, rickety table. Beyond the kitchen was a bedroom.

  Tess stared in horror.

  “This is filthy. I cannot stay here.” Behind them, Chavez laughed sourly.

  “Anna, she is right. This is a sty. You will clean it up.” Anna turned and hit out at him. He grabbed her hands.

  She fought him wildly, then went limp. She pleaded with him in Spanish, her voice catching on a sob. Tess tried to ignore them. She looked around and saw there was a back door in the bedroom. She tried not to stare at it, wondering if it wasn’t especially designed as an escape route for Chavez if a stronger force came after him.

  She didn’t want him to catch her staring at the door so she turned around and sat on one of the crude wooden chairs that surrounded the filthy table.

  “Tell her to clean it up!” Anna suddenly said, stamping her foot hard on the floor.

  “I will not,” Tess said immediately. She crossed her arms over her chest.

  Chavez was convulsed with laughter once again. He unbuckled his gun belt and tossed it on the table on top of the debris. He sat in a chair opposite Tess and stared at her, still very amused, so it seemed.

  “She will not clean up your slop, Anna. She is Miss. Stuart. She wears an Apache squaw’s buckskins, but she is a lady. You don’t know this, Anna, to be a lady. You must watch her. You musn’t ask her to pick up swill.” He stopped looking at Tess for a moment and slammed his fist against the table.

  “I am hungry, Anna. You will bring me something to eat. And you will bring something—for the lady.”

  Anna didn’t like that at all. She began to argue again. This time Chavez rose and slapped her hard across the face.

  Anna stared at him, tears forming in her eyes. But she said no more, choosing to obey him. Chavez looked at Tess sternly.

  “That is how to handle a woman!” he told her firmly.

  “That, Chavez, is not even the proper way to handle a dog,” she told him.

  But a second later it was all that she could do not to shrink away from him as he jumped to his feet and stood over her, his hand raised, ready to strike. She willed herself not to flinch.

  Slowly, his hand fell.

  He smiled, then he laughed, and returned to his seat, still looking at her.

  “I would like to keep you here. I would like to see you change your tune. I would like to see you after your eyes had been blackened and your body used by every man here. Then you would not be so proud.”

  “You could never really touch me, Chavez,” she said softly.

  “You can hurt Anna because she loves you. You cannot hurt a woman who despises you. That is something that you cannot even begin to understand.”

  He looked at her, puzzled, then the door opened again. Anna was back with a plate of food for Chavez and one for Tess.

  Tess didn’t want to touch anything in the filthy hovel, but she thought again that she needed strength if she was going to escape, and she hadn’t had anything but water all day. She accepted the plate Anna handed her, saying a soft, “Thank you.” Anna looked at her curiously, then went to sit in a chair facing Chavez, her head bowed.

  Tess chewed the stringy beef she had been handed, and scooped up the beans with a spoon. She ate quickly but she still had not finished when Chavez let out a loud belch and wiped his face with the back of his sleeve. She glanced at him and felt ill. Knowing she could eat no more, she set her plate on the table.

  “You see? She does not eat much, just little, little bites, like a lady,” Chavez told Anna. He pushed himself back from the table and rose. Belching again, he growled at Anna to get out of his way.

  “I will drink with my comrades!” he said. He went to Tess and gripped her chin hard.

  “I will come back when I have drunk my fill. And I will decide if you get to learn your lessons from me—or the Apache.” Laughing, he released her, collected his guns from the table and strode out of the house. When he was gone, Tess stared at Anna, watching the woman’s jealous face.

  Suddenly she leaped to her feet.

  “Anna, listen to me. You want Chavez. I do not! Help me. Get me out of here.”

  “No!” Anna cried in alarm.

  “You want him. I hate him] Please” — “No! No, no, no! He will beat me!

  He might kill me.” The woman wasn’t going to help her, no matter how jealous she was. With a deep sigh of exasperation Tess wandered back to her chair.

  She closed her eyes for a moment.

  Lord, she was tired.

  Seconds went by, then minutes. Anna stayed where she was, her head lowered.

  Tess looked longingly at the rear door. If she tried to escape, Anna would sound the alarm. She wouldn’t have a chance.

  She wondered how long Chavez had been gone. The Comancheros were all outside drinking. Drink might make Chavez think he wanted her more than he wanted the gold the Apache was paying for her. He was a brutally cruel man, she had to remember that. It wasn’t difficult. She had only to close her eyes to remember how he had murdered Jeremiah and David in cold blood.

  And then an idea came to her. She hurried over to Anna, falling to her knees before the woman in her excitement.

  “Anna! What if we fought? What if we pretend that I bested you and that I”

  “You could not beat me, puta!” Anna claimed. “Anna! Chavez is your man!

  This is pretend. I tie you up.

  I gag you. Then I am gone, and you have Chavez, and he cannot hate you for letting me go. He must love you all the more for what I have done to you.” Tess didn’t know if that was true or not, but she was certain that Anna would survive Chavez, and equally certain that she might not do so herself. Anna’s eyes had narrowed, as if she was giving the idea a great deal of speculation.

  Tess picked up a lock of her hair.

  “I am blond! That is what they want.
If I stay, Chavez might throw you out.”

  That decided it. Anna stood and looked around the room. She rushed’ from the kitchen to the bedroom and found some scarves.

  “Is this good?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  Anna moved to the hearth where she picked up a heavy cast-iron skillet. She thrust it toward Tess.

  “Hit me. You must hit me hard on the head. I must have a bruise.”

  “I—I don’t think that I can” — “You must! If Chavez should beat me, it would be much worse. ‘ ” All fight,” Tess agreed doubtfully.

  “Let’s get in the bedroom. I want you to fall on the bed. I don’t want to hurt you .”

  “You must hurt me some.”

  They walked into the bedroom. Like the kitchen, it was a mess—with the bed unmade and clothes strewn everywhere.

  Anna stood before the bed.

  “Now hit me.”

  Tess closed her eyes and bit her lip. Then she raised the iron skillet high and brought it crashing down on Anna’s head. The woman fell without a sound.

  Panicked Tess checked to see if she had a pulse and if l~er lungs still rose and fell with her breath. Assured that the woman was alive, she Set to tying her wrists and ankles and gagging her with the scarves.

  She was just finishing the task when the front door slammed open.

  Chavez was back!

  Tess ran to the rear door. She moved soundlessly and with tremendous speed, and yet it wasn’t enough. The door stuck when she tugged upon it.

  Chavez was behind her. He grappled her shoulders and spun her around, a rich growl thundering against his throat.

  Tess stared into his ebony eyes. His fingers closed around her throat.

  “You are dangerous! The gringos were right about you! You are trouble and you need to be taken care of, now?

  He was strangling her. She could barely breathe. In desperate self-defense she brought her knee slamming as hard as she could against his groin. It was a powerful and direct hit, and Chavez screamed out his pain, staggering back.

  Tess did not want to stay to see if his condition improved. She grabbed the door again. Gasping, nearly crying, she strained against it.

  Then, it opened. She nearly fell against Chavez, it opened so suddenly.

  She was about to bolt through it when she gasped. Her heart seemed to stop in her chest, her knees grew weak, her mind went blank of anything other than the man standing in the doorway.

  It was Jamie. He had come.

  Hands on hips, he stood there, staring. The breadth of his shoulders filled the doorway. He seemed to tower over her and Chavez, and indeed, the entire room. He stared at Tess and at Chavez, swiftly summing up the situation.

  He was alive! He had come for her. She had not allowed herself to believe he could be dead, but still he was a dream standing before her, the hero come to sweep her away. She was so stunned to see him she could not move, she could not utter a word, she couldn’t even cry out her thrill at seeing him standing there alive, warm blood pulling in his veins, his chest rising and falling with every breath he took. She saw nothing but Jamie.

  Chavez had not seemed to notice Jamie was there. Chavez was staring at Tess, and there was pure, cold murder in his coal-black eyes.

  “Tess!” Jamie hissed to her.

  “Move!”

  She found motion at last as Chavez charged after her. She pitched herself toward Jamie. He caught her shoulders, and his smoke-gray eyes stared sternly into hers. “Go!” he commanded her.

  “Go, get out of here, run! Do you hear me? Get the hell out and run!”

  Then he thrust her behind him and out the door, into the darkness of the night. Tess heard the sound of the impact as Chavez came thundering against Jamie.

  She couldn’t run. She paused and turned back. Chavez had pulled his knife.

  The steel glistened in the pale moonglow of the night.

  “Jamie!” she cried.

  But Jamie had seen the knife. She expected him to draw his Colt, but when he didn’t she realized he couldn’t draw down the entire camp upon them with the sounds of bullets.

  He, too, drew a knife.

  “Go!” he thundered to Tess.

  Still she hesitated, tears forming on her eyes. “Jamie” — “Go! I’ll deal with you later?”

  His furious, high-handed tone finally sent her into motion. She had been kidnapped and abused, and now he was yelling at her.

  Yelling at her. and facing Chavez with a knife. She bit her lip, then turned and ran. The trail stretched~ out in the darkness before her, narrow, twisting, rising higher and higher into the mountains. Gasping for breath, half choking, half sobbing, Tess continued to run. She stumbled into a huge rock, glowing white in the moonlight.

  She caught hold of it, wincing against the pain in her feet, inhaling deeply and desperately. Then she started to run again, almost blind as the shrub grew thicker and rose higher, adding to the darkness of the night.

  Staggering, she kept on running. She grabbed at shrubs, still running, heedless of discomfort or pain.

  Then, in the darkness, she slammed against something with such impetus that she fell to the ground, barely catching herself to break the fall, scraping her palms with the rock and dirt beneath her hands. Stunned, she tossed the hair from her eyes and looked up, trying to discern what had happened.

  She gasped yet made no noise, and her heart began to thunder with renewed terror.

  He stood before her, naked except for a breech clout his arms crossed over his chest. He was as tall as Jamie, as broad, and very, very dark. His hair was ebony and it streamed straight down his back. He was nearly copper in color, and his features were very strong and hard.

  He reached down, grasped her wrists and drew her to her feet.

  Instinctively she tried to pull away from him. His grip upon her tightened.

  He smiled very slowly, and though she struggled, he held her tightly.

  “Let me go,” Tess said.

  “Jamie—er, Lieutenant Slater is right behind me, and he’ll shoot you.”

  She was losing her mind. She was trying to explain things in English to an Apache savage.

  “So you are the blond woman who costs so dearly,” he responded in perfect English.

  “You have escaped the Comancheros. You will not escape me.”

  She shook her head wildly.

  “No! You do not understand me! Let me go.

  I’ve a friend. He’s fight behind me. He’s killing that Comanchero and he’s going to kill you. He”—” Shut up, Sun-Colored Woman.”

  “My name is Tess. Or Miss. Stuart. It’s” — “Sun-Colored Woman. That is to be your name. I am Nalte, and it will be so.”

  “Nalte!” she breathed. She had escaped the Comanchere to run into the arms of the very Apache who had ordered her as if she was dry goods for a mercantile store! “You—you speak English,” she said.

  “Yes. Now you will come.”

  “No! Please, listen” — He wasn’t going to listen. He grasped her wrists and drew her over his shoulders. She slammed her fists furiously against him.

  “Let me go, you savage! Let me go fight now! You can’t just buy a blond woman! Please …”

  But he wasn’t listening to her. He was moving flcetly up the hail. He didn’t seem to be running, but the trail was disappearing beneath his feet, and they were moving higher and higher into the mountains. He was ignoring her pleas.

  “Bastard!” she cried in furious panic.

  “Savage! Horrid, horrid savage!”

  That brought him to a halt. He lifted her and slammed her down upon her knees. She tried to rise, and he pressed her down with such fury that she w~nt still. He towered over her.

  “Savage? You, a white woman, would call me savage? No one knows the meaning of brutality so well as your own kind. Let me tell you, Sun-Colored Woman, what the whi~ man, the white soldier has done to us, to my people.” The moon rose high, shimmering down upon him with sudden clarity. Nalte,
his bronze shoulders slick and heavily muscled, walked around her.

  “In 1862 your General James Carleton sent a dispatch unit through Apache Pass. Cochise and Mangas Coloradas lay in wait. There was a fierc~ battle, and Mar~gas Coloradas was seized from his horse. He was taken to Janos, but his followers told the doctors that he must be cured or their town would be destroyed. So he survived.

  “Mangas Coloradas survived so that he could come a year later, under a flag of truee, to parlay with the soldiers and miners for peaee. He was seized.

  Your general ordered that he have Mangas Coloradas the next morning, alive or dead. So do you know what your civilized white people did to him?

  They heated their bayonets in the fire, and they burned his legs, and when he protested, they shot him for trying to escape. It was not enough. They cut off his head, and they boiled it in a large pot. Do you understand? They boiled his head. But now you would sit there, and you would tell me that I am savage?”

  She wasn’t sitting, she was kneeling, in exactly the position in which he had pressed her. She was trembling, shaking like a leaf blown in winter, and she was praying that Jamie would arrive and rescue her.

  But of course, she didn’t know if Jamie was alive or dead. He had faced Chavez in a knife fight, and she couldn’t know the outcome. And now she was facing an articulate Apache who seemed to have reason to want vengeance.

  “You speak English exceptionally well,” she said dryly. He did not appreciate her sense of humor. He wrenched her to her feet and pulled her against him. “You will find no mercy with me,” he assured her.

  “Do not beg.” “I—I never beg,” she said, but the words came out in a whisper. She wasn’t certain if they were defiant or merely pathetic. It didn’t matter. He pushed her forward, then tossed her over his shoulder again.

  “No!” she protested wildly. She hit his back, but he did not notice her frantic effort. She braced against him and screamed, loudly. desperately.

  Jamie. Dear God, where was he now?

  Perhaps it did not matter. Perhaps there was no help for either of them anymore.

  That brought him to a halt. He lifted her and slammed her down upon her knees. She tried to rise, and he pressed her down with such fury that she went still. He towered over her.