Katy watched her mother walk toward the Alvarez buggy. Blinking back her tears, she whispered, “I love you, mama,” then turned and climbed hurriedly aboard the Concord that would carry her to her new life in Colorado.
Shortly, three men clamored into the coach. They were drummers, by the look of them, smelling of cigar smoke and whiskey. Katy felt a sudden apprehension as one of the men plopped down beside her, forcing her to slide across the seat or risk being crushed by his ponderous bulk, for he was a grossly fat man with a red handlebar moustache, close-set gray eyes, and several flabby chins.
The other two men, one balding and thin, the other a sallow-faced youth in a blue pinstripe suit, both ogled Katy as they sat down on the seat opposite her.
Katy flinched as the fat man’s thigh rubbed against hers.
“Sorry, missy,” the fat man said, laughing jovially. “I guess this here little seat weren’t built for a man my size.”
Katy smiled at him uncertainly, then turned to stare out the window. Perhaps she should have let her mother accompany her to the convent after all. No one would dare make improper advances toward her with Sarah Alvarez sitting at her side. But it was too late to think of that now.
Katy took a last look at the town where she had been born and raised. Probably she would never see it again. Her father had loved Mesa Blanca. On the rare occasion when he had been home from the Indian wars, he had taken Katy to town, stopping at Faught’s General Store to buy her a bag of rock candy, or a dozen ribbons for her hair, or a length of cloth for a new dress. On her tenth birthday, her father had taken her into the newspaper office and paid the editor five silver dollars to print up a special edition of the paper with Katy’s name in boldface type on the front page. Katy still had that copy of the newspaper in the bottom drawer of her dresser back home.
Another time her father had taken her to Mexico to see the bullfights. Katy had loved the noise and the people and the colorful costumes and the matadors and picadors, but she had cried when they killed the bull. She could never abide seeing anything killed or hurt, could not stomach the sight of blood.
Her father… He had been a big, handsome man, with a love for life and a way of making even the most ordinary events seem wonderfully special and exciting. He had taught Katy to ride before she could walk, had taught her to fire his pistol, and to rope anything that moved. He had taught her to speak his native tongue, the soft Spanish words sounding pleasing to Katy’s ears, so much more romantic and musical than her mother’s harsh English.
Katy had cried for days when the news came that her father had been killed by Apaches. But not her mother. Sarah had retired to her bedroom for one brief day to quietly vent her grief, and the next day she had gone about with her head high and her eyes dry, as if nothing had happened. It had never occurred to Katy that her mother’s broken heart had never healed, or that her mother frequently cried herself to sleep. Katy saw only the woman who worked tirelessly, who ran the Alvarez ranch as capably as any man.
Katy smiled and waved as Gus Kelly emerged from the stage office. Staggering across the dusty street, Gus took his place on the high front seat. Gus was a short man with a round face, watery brown eyes, and a mane of shaggy white hair that looked as though it had never seen a comb. Katy knew her mother did not approve of Mr. Kelly, but Katy liked the man because he had been her father’s friend.
The driver, Dave Tully, shut the coach door with a bang, then poked his head in the window to make sure his passengers were all aboard. He nodded politely to Katy, admonished the men to be careful with their cigars, then hopped up on the high front seat, his agility belying his sixty-odd years.
“All aboard!” Tully hollered. He cracked the whip above the six-horse team, and the horses leaned into the traces.
Katy’s melancholy mood passed as the coach lurched forward. With a little thrill of excitement, she realized she was on her own for the first time in her life. On her own and bound for a new beginning in a new world. There would be no memories of Robert behind the high gray walls of the convent, nothing to remind her of a dashing young man with laughing brown eyes.
As Mesa Blanca passed from view, the man beside Katy pulled a flask from his hip pocket. Taking a long swallow, he passed it across the aisle to his traveling companions.
“Want some, little lady?” the balding man asked after taking a long drink. He had close-set green eyes, a crooked nose, and a leering smile that made Katy nervous and ill at ease.
She shook her head vigorously. “No, thank you.” With great exaggeration, she drew her cloak around her and pressed closer to her side of the seat, making it clear, she hoped, that she wished to be left alone.
“No call to be unfriendly,” the fat man remarked with an injured air. “I’m Jake Cardall, lately of Tucson. This here’s Will Thompson, and that young squirt in the fancy suit is Charlie Edmunds.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, I’m sure,” Katy responded dubiously.
The fat man nodded. “And you’d be?”
“Miss Alvarez,” Katy answered coolly.
“Well, Miss Alvarez, I’m purely pleased to meet you.” Jake Cardall said, giving her a wink. “Could be we’ll all be real good friends by the time we reach Colorado Territory.”
For some reason, Cardall’s comment elicited a burst of laughter from Thompson and Edmunds.
“Real good friends,” Will Thompson said with a sly grin in Katy’s direction.
“Maybe even intimate friends,” Charlie Edmunds mused, nudging Thompson in the side.
Katy huddled deeper into her cloak, suddenly feeling very alone, and very vulnerable. She knew little of the darker side of men, or of their desires, but she recognized the drunken lust sizzling in the fat man’s eyes as he leered at her over the whiskey flask.
Moving slowly, her hands shielded by the folds of her cloak, Katy reached into her reticule and withdrew a small pearl-handled over-and-under derringer. The gun was cold in her palm, and its chill seemed to penetrate her spine as the atmosphere in the coach grew suddenly taut, heavy with the smell of whiskey and wanting.
Katy drew herself up, her chin jutting forward, her sapphire eyes flashing like shards of blue glass as she silently dared the men to touch her.
Her abrupt change of mood from shy victim to defiant antagonist amused the men. A deer might foolishly challenge a wolf, but the wolf always won.
Jake Cardall emptied the flask and tossed it aside. Then, grinning crookedly, he laid his hand over Katy’s knee.
Katy gasped in shocked outrage as Cardall’s freckled hand squeezed her leg. No gentleman ever touched a lady. No man, not even Robert, had ever dared treat her with anything but the utmost courtesy and respect.
Quite unexpectedly, Katy threw her cloak aside and jabbed the muzzle of the derringer into the fat man’s gut.
“Remove your hand,” Katy demanded quietly, pleased that her voice betrayed none of the anxiety she was feeling inside.
Charlie Edmunds and Will Thompson were momentarily taken aback by the sight of the gun in Katy’s delicate hand. Then they began to laugh.
“Looks like she’s got the drop on you, Jake,” Edmunds said, grinning broadly. “I think you’d best do as she says.”
Thompson nodded eagerly. “Yeah,” he said. “I think she means it.”
“I do mean it,” Katy assured them. “Unhand me this instant.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the fat man said, and jerked his hand from Katy’s leg as if her skirt had suddenly grown fangs and a tail. “I’m sorry, ma’am, it won’t happen again,” he assured her sincerely. “It’s just that a woman traveling alone, we thought…” Cardall shrugged, clearing his throat to cover his urge to laugh out loud. The little chit has spunk, damn her!
“I know what you thought,” Katy retorted coldly. “But you were mistaken. I am on my way to Colorado to enter the convent there.”
“Convent! Lord, forgive me,” Jake Cardall murmured. “I am sorry, Miss Alvarez. Truly sorry.”
An uncomfortable silence fell over the coach as the three men sent covert glances at Katy. A nun! Who would have guessed that such a pretty little filly was bound for a convent?
Katy pretended to be unaware of their curious glances as she looked out the window, the derringer still tightly clutched in her hand. The coach was traveling across barren desert now, and she wondered idly why God had created such an inhospitable land, fit for neither man nor beast, though it was said the Apache roamed the desert at will. But then, she mused contemptuously, the Apache were neither man nor beast but some kind of depraved inhuman monsters that went about preying on innocent women and children, killing brave men like her father, and Robert.
The next three days were the longest and the most tiring that Katy had ever endured. Each night at sundown the coach stopped at some dismal waystation to allow them to change horses, eat, and sleep. The food was usually beans and coarse brown bread washed down with water or bitter black coffee; the sleeping accommodations were equally crude, usually consisting of little more than a pallet on the floor and a thin blanket that was like as not infested with fleas, or worse.
With the coming of dawn, the passengers gathered in the main room for a cheerless breakfast, and then they were on the trail again, journeying across seemingly endless miles of dreary, God-forsaken country populated by little more than stunted trees, rocky ground, and fat lizards. A relentless sun scorched the earth.
Katy’s traveling companions treated her with the utmost respect and for that at least, she was grateful. The interior of the coach was hot and uncomfortable, rank with the smell of perspiring bodies and cigar smoke. The Concord’s constant bouncing and jarring made Katy’s whole body ache so that she longed for a hot bath and a good night’s sleep even more than she yearned for some of Marta’s mouthwatering meals.
The men treated Katy with deference, making sure she was the first one served when they stopped for the night, taking care to see that she had the best of the limited sleeping accommodations provided at the various stage stops along the way. Once, when one of the men who worked at one of the waystations made a pass at Katy, Jake Cardall intervened, promising to break the man’s arm if he persisted in bothering “the lady”.
Katy was consoling herself with the thought that her journey was half over when the nightmare began. A blood-curdling scream rose on the hot desert wind, sending a chill down Katy’s spine, and then, before she had time to think, the coach was surrounded by a dozen paint-daubed Indians wielding rifles and feathered lances.
Katy stared at the savages in horrified fascination as images of fleet calico ponies and grotesquely painted faces imprinted themselves on her mind. She shivered as another war cry sounded in her ears, felt her blood run cold as she realized she was going to die. Seeking comfort, she turned frightened eyes toward Will Thompson, only to see her own fears mirrored in the man’s eyes. Charlie Edmunds was no better. His face was the color of paper, and he was babbling incoherently. Jake Cardall was pressed back against the seat, his hands tightly clenched over his ample paunch.
With a sinking heart, Katy realized the men were not going to protect her. They were all greenhorns, new to the West, and as helpless and frightened as she was.
The sudden whine of an arrow, or perhaps the sight of Katy’s taut face, spurred Jake Cardall to action. Grabbing Katy’s reticule, he fumbled inside for her derringer, blindly fired one barrel into the chest of a screaming Indian who appeared at the window.
Outside, Katy could hear Dave Tully cussing the horses, his voice high-pitched and shaky as he begged the lathered team for more speed. Dust boiled around the coach, clogging Katy’s nose and throat, making everything seem hazy and slightly out of focus. There was the soft hum of an arrow slicing through the air, an ugly thwack as the painted shaft pierced Will Thompson’s throat. His hands, soft as those of a young girl, clawed at the arrow embedded in his flesh. A wet gurgling sound rattled in his throat, and then he toppled sideways across Charlie Edmunds’ lap.
Jake Cardall shouted, “Get down!” as he shoved Katy to the floor of the coach, partially shielding her trembling body with his own massive frame as he fired the second barrel of the derringer at a passing Indian and missed. Muttering a vile oath, Cardall rooted around in Katy’s bag looking for more shells.
Katy huddled at Cardall’s feet, her hands covering her ears in a vain attempt to shut out the awful shrieks of the Indians. Why did they make such hideous sounds? Why didn’t they go away? Why didn’t Charlie Edmunds stop his useless babbling? She heard Jake Cardall swear as he dropped one of the precious cartridges, and she felt a rush of affection for the fat man who was trying to protect her.
Outside, a horse screamed in pain, and then Katy added her own terrified cry to the din as Jake Cardall fired point-blank into the face of a leering savage. The gunshot hung in the air and time seemed to grind to a halt as the Indian’s head slowly dissolved in a sea of bright red blood.
A moment later, or was it an hour, Charlie Edmunds slid to the floor beside her, a great bloody hole where his nose and mouth had been. Nausea rose in Katy’s throat as she stared at Edmunds through wide, uncomprehending eyes. Surely she was dreaming. Surely this could not be happening to her. In a moment she would wake up, safe and secure in her own bed back home. Her mother would be chiding her for sleeping so late, and the smell of frying bacon and Marta’s heavenly coffee would tickle her nostrils. It had to be a dream.
Jake Cardall grunted softly as a bullet thudded into his chest. He mumbled a quiet, “‘Scuse me, ma’am,” as he slid off the seat, falling sideways across Katy’s lower body so that she was trapped beneath his vast bulk.
There was an abrupt change in the sound of the battle as all firing suddenly ceased. Katy began to shiver uncontrollably as she realized the heavy silence meant all the men were dead. There was no one left to help her. Soon the Indians would stop the runaway coach and she would have to face them, alone.
Katy felt a great knot of fear tighten her insides as every unspeakable tale of rape and abuse she had ever heard flashed across her mind, each story of terror and treachery more awful than the last. She recalled stories of men being staked out over anthills, their faces brushed with honey to attract the insects. There were horror stories of men being skinned alive, or burned at the stake. Once she had read a firsthand account of a man who had been scalped and lived to tell the tale.
Fear gave wings to Katy’s imagination and she envisioned herself being repeatedly raped by the savages, being attacked again and again until they tired of their sport and slit her throat.
Abruptly, all panic ceased and a cold sense of dread settled over Katy, bringing with it a measure of calm. There were two choices open to her, she mused grimly. Rape and humiliation at the hands of the Indians, or death by her own hand. It took less than a heartbeat to decide.
Mouthing a silent prayer that God would forgive her, she began to pry her derringer from Jake Cardall’s lifeless fingers, but before she could wrest the weapon from his grasp, the coach slammed into a boulder and toppled over onto its side.
Chapter Two
“Uncle, look!” The boy pointed toward the west, where four large black vultures hovered in the sky, then slowly dropped lower, lower, until they were out of sight.
“You have sharp eyes, little one,” the warrior acknowledged proudly. “Come, let us see what draws the scavenger birds.”
Tall Buffalo touched his heels to his horse’s flanks, and the buckskin broke into a slow lope. The boy, Bull Calf, fell in beside the warrior, his oval face filled with the eager curiosity of youth. Perhaps they would find a dead enemy on whom he could count coup! Or, better yet, a live one.
The unbridled excitement in the boy’s eyes caused the warrior to grin in retrospect as he recalled the days of his own youth. Always, when riding with his elders, he had hoped for the worst, an encounter with enemy warriors or, better still, with the hated soldier coats. The young ones, the warrior mused, their blood always runs hot.
/> “Do not get your hopes up too high,” Tall Buffalo admonished gently. “It is probably just the carcass of a wounded buffalo that draws the birds.”
But it was not an animal. Cresting a small rise, the pair spied an overturned stagecoach lying on the desert floor like some huge, prehistoric beast.
Tall Buffalo quickly put his horse down the hill, signaling for Bull Calf to follow. There was no sign of life as they approached the coach, but then it was unlikely that there would be any survivors. Of all the tribes that roamed the vast plains and arid deserts, the Apache were the most warlike, the most feared. They rarely took prisoners; they never left survivors behind.
Dismounting, the tall warrior easily read the tracks surrounding the Concord. A small force of Apache warriors, quickly identified by the cut of their moccasins and by the leathered shafts of the arrows embedded in the driver and guard, had attacked the stage. They had not bothered to search the bodies, for white men rarely carried anything of value to an Indian. Likewise, the dead had not been scalped, for most of the Apache tribes did not take scalps. Their interest had been the six coach horses, and the rifles and ammunition carried by the driver and guard.
Tall Buffalo threw a questioning glance at the boy standing beside him. He had brought Bull Calf on this journey far from home to teach him the ways of a Cheyenne warrior, just as his uncle had once taught him more than twenty summers ago. Now Tall Buffalo waited patiently to see how his nephew would interpret the plentiful signs left by the Apache.
“There were ten or twelve warriors,” Bull Calf began confidently, then stopped abruptly as a low groan sounded from inside the coach.
Tall Buffalo put a finger to his lips, warning the boy to remain silent as he scaled the side of the overturned coach and peered cautiously inside.
At first glance, Tall Buffalo saw only what he had seen before, the tangled bodies of three white men, all long dead. He was turning away when a second groan rose from beneath the pile of bodies, and a slim white hand forced its way into view.
Love in the Wind Page 2
