by Janet Dailey
“Is that all you did?” Cimmy Lou urged huskily, a groan rising in her throat.
“No. No, that wasn’t all.” His mouth was opening to encircle a tautly erect nipple even before he dragged the upper half of her body over the tub’s rim so he could reach it.
Her long fingers dug into the ridges of his shoulders to both brace and balance her as he greedily consumed her breast, his full mustache bristling against the skin as he butted and pulled at it, his hand roughly kneading its hanging firmness. The occasional nipping tug of his teeth created a sensual pain that took her breath away. When he transferred that same suckling attention to her other breast, a curling sensation traveled all the way to her toes and she clamped her legs tightly together to ease the throbbing between them.
But their positions were awkward and the water made their skins slippery. Cimmy Lou was unable to maintain her precarious balance across the copper tub with her feet on the floor, and splashed into the tub, her feet in the air, soaking all but the hem of her skirt and the very top of her blouse. Their combined volume sent the water sloshing over the copper sides onto the floor.
Laughing, Cimmy Lou scrambled out of the tub, dripping water everywhere. “You got me soppin’ wet. I’m gonna hafta take these clothes off an’ wring ’em dry,” she declared in her most provocative manner, and deliberately looked him in the eyes while she stripped off her clothes. Last of all she removed the bandanna restraining the mane of curly black hair and stood before him in Nubian splendor, proudly naked. “I guess I should see if’n I can’t find somethin’ to wear while my clothes is dryin’.”
As she crossed to the wardrobe, she heard the major climbing out of the tub. She made a bold play, taking the silver shawl from the shelf and draping it around her shoulders. When she turned to face him, the crocheted material was drawn together under her breasts and the fringed comers dangled to a point at the V of her pelvis.
“How do I look?” The thrusting angle of her hips invited him.
“Beautiful.” His erection confirmed the power she had over him. He walked to her like a man in a dream and pulled apart the shawl to feast his eyes on all of her. His hands wandered over her in slow discovery, traveling from the lamb’s-wool softness of her hair to the sleek curve of her dark buttocks, gradually drawing her into the circle of his arms.
“No.” Cimmy Lou grew impatient with his gentle handling. “Be wild with me.” She curled talon-fingers into his hair and showed him the wanton ways of loving with the straining press of her rounded body and the tonguing excitement of her kiss.
Later, after she had drained him of all the pent-up energies and taken the sting from him, Stephen watched her pick up her wet clothes, still enthralled by the dark sheen of her body. Not a single whore he’d paid to bed had ever encouraged him to give full rein to his passions the way she had tonight—to be as wild and as wicked as he pleased.
“Cimmy Lou.” He could see by her expression that she knew how well she had satisfied him. “I . . . want to see you again,” he admitted after a brief hesitation.
“Maybe.” She shrugged, and he knew that she refused to commit herself just to torment him.
It rankled him that she could do so, when he was a major and she was just a colored laundress. Stephen reached for his money pouch to settle up for the “special services.” “How much do I owe you?”
A hot flash of temper crossed her expression. “I ain’t no whore. Major,” she snapped. “You cain’t buy me. I gives ‘cause it’s my pleasure.”
Surprised to find that he had misjudged her, he was taken aback. “I—I’m sorry,” he offered stiffly and awkwardly.
Cimmy Lou immediately softened. “Now, if’n you be wantin’ t’give me a present ‘cause I pleased ya, I’d like it fine if’n you gives me this shawl.”
His hesitation over giving away this article of Hannah’s was brief. She had never been fond of it that he recalled. “By all means, take it.”
“Maybe I can wear it fo’ you again,” she half-promised, quickly gathering it up.
“Tomorrow,” Stephen said.
She laughed, but he knew she’d be at his quarters the following night.
CHAPTER 9
THE LARGE BUNDLE OF DEAD STICKS AND BRANCHES rattled together like a bunch of dry bones as Hannah dragged them to the jacal. A length of rawhide was hitched around the stick bundle and the slack center of the rawhide rope served as a tumpline across her forehead. She stopped and slipped the rawhide band off her forehead with a duck of her head, then paused for a minute, pressing one hand against the stitch in her side while she caught her breath.
Underneath the crude ramada, which offered the only shelter from the broiling sun of late summer, Gatita knelt to mix penole, a kind of cornmeal mush, for their night meal. Her protuding stomach was huge. Hannah didn’t think it could be much longer before her time came.
A two-year-old toddler trotted close to the fire in his unsteady stagger. Like all children, he had free run of the rancheria. All the adults looked out for the children and kept them out of harm’s way. If the Apaches had any redeeming quality, Hannah thought, it was their deep affection for the children. She crossed to the fire and steered the little tyke away from the hot coals.
A gasp that seemed to mix surprise with pain came from the ramada. When Hannah turned, Gatita was pressing a hand against the side of her baby-swollen stomach.
“Do you have pain?” Hannah questioned.
“Ann, yes. Is nothing.” The smallest of smiles edged her mouth, a glimmer of pride showing through. “Baby kick. Strong. I think ish-ke-ne, boy-child.”
Hannah’s mouth quirked briefly, but she was too tired to hold the smile. It seemed to be a common belief among both white people and Apaches that if a baby was active, it was a sign that the unborn child was a boy, while a quiet one was a girl.
“He-who-is-father comes.” Gatita put aside the penole and used the aid of the cedar post supporting the brush roof to pull her ungainly bulk to her feet.
A half dozen horses skittishly approached the ranch-eria, driven by the riders in the rear. Dust boiled around their legs as the Apache men who had not gone on the raid came out to herd them into a brush corral. The return of the raiding party meant a partial respite from work, at least until the excitement diminished. Hannah sought the shade of the brush arbor where Gatita stood, searching among the indistinct riders in the billowing alkali cloud for her husband.
Those closer and better able to see yelled something to the rest of the rancheria inhabitants. Something changed; the pitch of the voices became different, the tension almost tangible. Everyone gravitated toward the incoming riders, and Hannah was drawn into the flow, caught by the animal instinct that something was wrong. The voices became low, troubled murmurs.
A piercing wail suddenly broke from Gray Dove, Gatita’s sister, and she threw herself in the path of the brown-and-white-spotted war pony that Lutero rode. Her hands were lifted in pleading beseechment, while her wailing voice sobbed with questions. He was sullen and grim, as he spoke to her. As fresh screams of anguish quavered from Gray Dove, Hannah noticed that the Apache who was her husband was not among the returning warnors. But another man was!
Something leaped in her chest when she saw straw-brown hair poking from under a floppy-brimmed cowboy hat. Another rider was in the way and it was a moment before she saw the panicked face, a sickly white color. The man’s glance darted wildly about as he started and trembled in his terror at every sight and sound.
For a moment, Hannah went a little crazy herself. She shouldered her way through the Apaches to get close to the riders, and hurried alongside the horses in a kind of running walk. “Mister. Hey, mister!” she called to make herself heard above the tramp of the horses and the collective wails of several mourners. “Hello!”
His startled look finally located her. “Are you a . . . white woman?” His voice sounded so young and frightened. Hannah doubted if he was more than twenty-five, her own age. He was wearing full, sw
eeping chaparejos, and on the blaze-faced roan he rode was a high-horned
“Yes.” She rushed the answer and spoke quickly as Lutero used his horse to block her from his captive. “My husband is Stephen Wade! Major Stephen Wade! Tell him ...” She knew he couldn’t hear her anymore with all the commotion in the camp, but the cowboy kept turning in the saddle to look back at her. “Tell him you saw me,” she finished lamely.
“Ugashi, go.” Lutero ordered her back to the wickiup.
Hannah went slowly, watching to see where they took the cowboy. It was difficult to see with the dust rolling from under the horses’ hooves and all the Apaches on foot crowding around them. The women relatives of the slain warrior were wild with grief as they raged at the enemy, the white cowboy. They bound his feet and tied his hands behind his back, then sat him in a large patch of bare ground with two braves guarding him with rifles. The unrelenting sun blasted him. Hannah could see the sweat dripping off his forehead and the end of his nose, plastering the front of his shirt to his skin. She took a water bag and tried to approach him, but Chavez, Gatita’s father, blocked her path.
“Lady?!” the cowboy called anxiously to her as she started to turn away. “Lady, you gotta help me. What are they gonna do to me?”
“I... I don’t know,” Hannah admitted. It was a question she kept asking herself, now that she’d gotten over the shock of seeing a white person after all this time. The rest of the band was meeting in a large communal area they used for ceremonies and council talks.
Chavez gave her a push and made a threatening gesture. She took a couple of steps, then stopped on the pretense that a stone was lodged in the seam of her moccasins.
“Ya gotta help me get away, ma’am.” It was almost a whine.
She knew that. “How?”
“Cut these ropes and I’ll figure out the rest.” His voice caught on a sob. “Sweet Jesus, don’t let them bastards torture me.”
“Where are you from? How’d they get you?” She shied from his explicitly expressed fear and sought information, something that might give her an idea of the nearest towns or ranches.
“Me an’ this hombre from Chihuahua were driftin’ some cows out of the Mogollons an’ they hit us. We tried to stand and make a fight of it, but. . . My name’s Jack Bledsoe, from over Uvalde way.” It suddenly seemed important to him that she know his name and hometown.
The meeting ended with a loud ki-yipping that reminded Hannah of a dog pack with the prey in sight and closing in for the kill. She turned as they came streaming toward the open ground, the women all, in a pack with a wild-eyed Gray Dove in front. They surged on him and pulled the struggling, protesting cowboy to his feet.
“What do they want with me?!” His voice lifted hoarsely to Hannah while he kept his frightened gaze on the women who were tearing and yanking at his shirt. “Help me!!”
She couldn’t stand there and do nothing. “No!!” Hannah rushed toward them and tried to get between the women and the cowboy. “Leave him alone!” she cried in Spanish. They pushed and kicked to get her out of their way. “Don’t hurt him!”
Lutero dragged her back, his hands clamped around the solid flesh of her upper arms. “Cocke!” he said gruffly, the deep snarl of his voice warning her not to interfere.
“What are they going to do to him?”
“He kill Knife-Open-Cheek. Gray Dove asks for him. It is her right.” Lutero maintained an iron hold on her arms while Hannah unconsciously strained against it.
Helpless, she watched the women strip the man stark naked, even taking his hat. Young Jack Bledsoe kept screaming over and over again, “What are they gonna do to me?”
She couldn’t tell him. She didn’t know whether Lutero meant that he’d been given to Gray Dove as a slave and his treatment would be the suffering she’d known, or whether Gray Dove had been given the right to punish him for the death of her husband. A bundle of firewood was dragged over, and Hannah recalled the branding fire that had burned into her chest. It still ached when the skin pulled just right.
“My God!! They’re gonna burn me!! No! Please!” he sobbed. His body was thin and very white except for the weathered tan of his face, neck, and the vee of his throat where his shirt collar had flopped open.
Hannah felt his terror and wept for him, large tears spilling over her lashes and running slowly down her cheeks. But rather than being used to build a fire, the wood was broken into long splinters that were sharp and thick. One by one the women began to stick them into his flesh, while he kept yelping and crying in his terror, “What are they gonna do? What are they gonna do?”
They took a long time, covering every inch of his body with the splinters, turning him into a walking porcupine. He writhed in agony. Then Hannah saw Gray Dove carry a flaming stick of wood from one of the campfires and touch it to the splinters. She screamed and tried violently to wrench herself from Lutero’s hold.
The boy’s full-throated shriek of horror spiraled above hers as the flames enveloped him within seconds, racing through the dried bits of wood like tinder. Before Hannah shut her eyes, a living ball of fire rolling on the ground was the last thing she saw. Lutero let go of her and she stumbled away, the stench of burning flesh filling her nostrils, the smell lingering long after his screams ceased to echo through the night. She vomited, emptying her stomach until only bile was left, and most of that came up, too.
She moved blindly with no thought of a destination and eventually sank to the ground with no idea of the place. For a long time, she sat with her knees bent and her forehead resting on them, while the tears dried on her face. She felt completely blank; everything was a void.
Once she had been so proud of her milk-white skin; now it was the color and texture of the buckskin of her clothes. And her hands had been so soft and smooth; now calluses gave them the roughness of sandpaper. No more afternoon teas with watercress and cucumber sandwiches; she was grateful for a drink of water and a chunk of zigosti, bread.
Why did she still want to live? Why, when maybe she would die like that later on?
“Vámonos, come,” Gatita ordered.
“No.” Hannah stated her rebellion quite simply. She saw no reason to live in subjugation any longer. When she lifted her head, she met Gatita’s glare with equanimity. “How can you kill a man like that? How can a woman kill a man like that?” she demanded.
Gatita stretched to attain every imperious inch of her five-foot height and looked down on her seated slave. During a long pause she studied Hannah’s upturned face, then rested a protective hand on the top curve of her stomach. Maneuvering her bulk with care, she lowered herself to the ground, kneeling and then sitting back on her heels.
“It is way of Apache.”
“To set people on fire? To burn them alive? No one deserves to die like that. It is the way of animals!” Hannah retorted.
“Look there.” Gatita motioned toward the barren, inhospitable reaches of the desert spilling out before them. “Desert kills like that, lakes man’s power piece at a time. Slow die. Power leave—slow.”
“That’s crazy.” Irritated, Hannah grabbed up a handful of sand and shook it inside her closed fist.
“No crazy. This Apache land. Take lot of power to live here. When white-eyes kill Knife-Open-Cheek, take power from Gray Dove. She must avenge and take power back. Man lets go of it piece at a time. Longer he take to die. more pieces Gray Dove have. It is way of Apache.”
“Could you kill like that, Gatita?” Hannah looked at the proud woman with a long sideways glance.
“Anh, yes.”
“Women and children?”
“Women and children have no power. Man has power.”
A throaty sound that was almost a laugh bubbled from Hannah. “That’s some consolation, I guess,” she said in English. “We may not have any power, but at least we don’t have to die like that.” Gatita gave her a puzzled and wary look, not following any of it. Hannah’s bitter amusement faded to a dry smile. “Maybe the desert is cruel. M
aybe man is cruel. We are the earth. I just don’t know any more.”
“Mañana, ugashé, tomorrow we go,” Gatita stated. “This place smell of dah-eh-sah, death.”
“Anh,” Hannah replied in Apache, agreeing with the Indian woman.
It was the time called Thick with Fruit. The rancheria’s wickiups were erected amid towering sagua-ro cacti to harvest its fruit and preserve it. But none of Gatita’s female relatives were out among the giant cacti. They were gathered at her wickiup, including her mother, Salt Lips, and a di-yin, a medicine woman skilled in midwifery. Observing the tribal taboo-where his mother-in-law was, he wasn’t—Lutero absented himself from the event.
Lifting aside the blanket flap over the low, traditionally east-facing door of the wickiup, Hannah carried in the water warmed over the campfire. Gatita knelt on an old blanket and held onto an upright post to brace herself during the contractions. Apache women did not give birth lying down, Hannah had been informed. The di-yin, a tall, stately, gray-haired woman, had given Gatita four salted pieces of the inner leaves of the yucca, a medicine that would make the birthing fast and easy. While the di-yin rubbed the extended abdomen, a solution made from a root powder was used to bathe Gatita’s genitals.
Hannah passed the water to Gatita’s mother, then hugged close to the rounded side of the wickiup, wanting to be present when the baby was born. Minutes later, a flurry of excited murmurs announced its advent as the head emerged to be cradled in the palm of the di-yin’s hand. An exhausted and sweating Gatita was smiling, her head thrown back, arching her throat for that last effort.
“Ish-ke-ne.”
“Ish-ke-ne.”
It was a boy-child; the happy words were repeated and spread as the newborn infant was gently drawn away from his mother. Hannah saw that the baby hadn’t begun breathing on its own and waited for the customary slap. Instead, the di-yin splashed cold water on the infant. After one tiny startled gasp, he breathed on his own but didn’t cry. There were approving nods all around the wickiup.
