by Janet Dailey
Digby gave him an anxious glance. “That horse has been in the same place the whole time.” His subdued tone was just louder than a whisper.
From behind them. Sergeant Hooker advised, “It could be the bait in an Apache trap.”
“Send two men ahead,” Stephen ordered.
Hooker turned in his saddle to look down the line of black troopers. “Henry. Beaufort.” His hand motioned them forward.
A shuffling of hooves, munching of bridle bits, and groaning of leather filtered through the night as the column shifted, giving up two of its number. With weapons drawn and at the ready, the advance detail rode forward and the shadows soon swallowed them; only the muffled plod of their horses’ hooves marking their presence.
The seconds of waiting seemed interminable, the silence and the stillness magnifying them. Then a single horse trotted back toward the column, its rider halting it within view of the patrol. “All clear, suh.”
They moved forward, Stephen holding his horse and the column to a walk, wisely wary for all his restless urgings. The reporting trooper waited for them.
“The horse is still hitched to the supply wagon—what’s left of it,” he explained, sotto voce. “Wheel broke an’ the box got wedged in some rocks.”
They came upon the missing second wagon, its contents scattered by the Apaches. The ground was strewn with silver ore rock and ransacked bedrolls. This time Stephen sat on his horse while he surveyed the shadowed scene. His instincts had been right, but it was like chasing the wind. They were always ahead of him.
The gravel of impatience and frustration was in his voice, along with fatigue. “Look for the body of the driver.”
In the darkness, a trooper stumbled over something on the ground and the object rolled with a glassy rattle over the stony soil. The soldier’s shadowy form bent to the ground as he picked it up. When he straightened, he had a bottle in his hand.
“Whiskey. Ya might know de Apaches got it fuhst,” he complained as he turned it upside down.
“Unhitch the horse from the wagon,” Stephen ordered.
“It’s strange that the Apaches didn’t take the horse with them—or kill it,” Lieutenant Digby remarked.
“I know.” It bothered Stephen, too; but the Apaches were seldom predictable in their actions.
“Major.” Hooker walked his horse over to them, a troubled frown on his face. “I smell smoke.”
The chill mountain air was sweet and fresh with the scent of pine and aromatic shrubs when Stephen tested it. Yet faintly there was the smell of burning, the smokeless kind of fire that the Apaches made.
“They built a fire around here somewhere, Sergeant. Find it.” And Stephen suspected, that they’d find the wagon driver, too. It seemed likely now that he hadn’t been killed in the first assault, only wounded, enough of him alive for the Apaches to torture.
The search had barely started when scouts found the Apache camp not fifty yards away in an arroyo pocket. The fire was a dull red eye on the ground; long, dark shapes lay around it, motionless. Stephen ordered his men to fan out, distrusting the situation but playing it as he found it. The longer he stared at the seemingly sleeping figures on the ground, the steadier his nerves grew. The hard metal butt of his revolver comfortably fitted his hand, the joint of his thumb heavy on the hammer and his forefinger curving hard against the trigger. An icy run of calm sliced wickedly through him.
He gave the order to attack and they hit the sleeping camp, everyone doubting that they were actually taking the Apaches by surprise. But in the first barrage of shouts and gunfire, it was all explained as the Apaches staggered to their feet, reeling drunkenly and quickly abandoning any attempt at defense in order to flee, the smashing of bullets around them having a sobering effect.
The soldiers charged through the camp, giving chase to two warriors who were attempting to escape on foot. Stephen stopped at the fire circle and reloaded the empty chambers of his revolver, gunpowder an acrid scent in the air and on his hands. Crumpled along the edge of the fire circle were the bodies of two dead Apaches who had tried to make, a stand, and that of a third Apache, badly wounded, his fingers digging into the dirt.
“Sweet Jesus,” someone cursed in a voice sickened with revulsion; then it steadied, and Stephen recognized Hooker’s voice. “Major. Yore wagon driver is here.”
Stephen backed away from the dead Apaches and crossed to the high shape of a tree and the black form Hooker made against it. The smell was bad, cooked hair and flesh making a malodorous combination. Hooker struck a sulfur match and Stephen saw the flame’s orange light flare over the wagoner’s body, which was hanging upside down over the hidden coals of a second fire. Stephen’s stomach heaved violently as he swung away from the revolting sight, a sick sweat breaking out across his face.
The match was shaken out. “They roasted his brains.” Hooker’s voice was sick and flat, hard with the effort to keep emotion out of it.
“Cut him down.” The low order was almost inaudible. Then anger vibrated through his voice, giving it vehemence. “Dammit, I said cut him down!”
“Yes, suh,” John T. Hooker responded. It wasn’t something he had to be told. “Cooper. Johnson. Over here.” He summoned two of his men as he watched Wade stalk to the Apaches’ fire.
Someone had tossed wood on it, and a bright blaze burned. John T. left the two soldiers to see to the driver’s body and followed the major. The sounds of pursuit, of running boots and rattling brush, could still be heard in the broken terrain around the camp. Empty whiskey bottles from the supply wagon rolled around the fire, evidence of the reason they had been able to slip up on the Apaches. They’d passed out.
“Hey, Sarge.” Trooper Moseby was bent over the wounded Apache, cautiously peering at the bloodied bullet holes torn in his copper flesh. “We’d better do somethin’ for this one. He’s bleedin’ bad.”
“Don’t touch him,” Wade snarled.
“But, suh, he’s hurt.”
“I said leave the bastard alone!” He took a threatening step toward the trooper; then he seemed to catch himself, and turned away. John T. released a slow breath and came forward.
“He needs mo’ than a patch job, Moseby,” was John T.’s only comment at the sight of the gut-shot Indian, neither confirming Wade’s order nor countering it.
The hounds had caught their quarry, and John T. turned toward the sounds of their approach as they shoved their Apache prisoners in front of them with the muzzles of their rifles. When the first one stepped within the upreaching glow of the firelight, something clicked in John T.’s memory. He stared at the deepchested Apache with the wide, heavy-boned features, lank black hair hanging to his shoulders, and the small scar on his cheek. With recognition came a cold feeling of dread as John T. looked at Major Wade. Very slowly he remembered that Wade had never seen Lutero before. And Amos Hill wasn’t with them, so there would be no questioning of the prisoners. John T. stared at the Apache Major Wade had hunted these past weeks with so much zeal and hatred—and kept silent.
Reveille, stable call, mess, fatigue, and drill call—the cavalry routine was a timeworn system. Hannah stood beneath the ramada and watched the close-order maneuvers of the company upon the parade ground, columns splitting, fours left, fours right, at a walk,’a trot, a gallop.
“Right by twos!” The shouted commands had a deep-voiced cadence to them.
Mrs. Mitchell passed by, a parasol raised to shade her face from the morning sun, and nodded to Hannah. She bobbed her head in acknowledgment of the greeting, but neither spoke. Here, too, was a routine Hannah recognized—the morning ritual of tea at the commander’s quarters. She was not surprised that her previous standing invitation had not been renewed. If she was there, they couldn’t very well talk about her. What better food for gossip than delicious scandal?
It was so bitterly and tragically ironic that she had been the victim of a violent act, perpetuated over many months, yet it was her morals they questioned, her virtue they doubted. Perh
aps if she acted more humble, showed some shame, instead of defending her actions and holding her head high, they . . . That ubiquitous “they” included her husband. About the only person who didn’t expect her to feel guilty was that man drilling the company on the parade ground, Captain Jake Cutter.
“Detail’s comin’ in.” Someone shouted to alert the post.
Word of the night patrol’s return spread quickly to all corners of the post. There was a stirring and a gradual drawing of people to the quadrangle to observe the arrival. Hannah left the porch and wandered toward the top of the parade ground, watching as they filed through the gate.
Stephen sat tall and erect in his saddle, leading the detachment that entered the fort, his beard-darkened face the only evidence he showed of the all-night ride. The troopers were round-shouldered with fatigue, but their heads were up. In the first glance, searching for signs of casualties, Hannah took little note of the two Apache prisoners, astride a pair of horses that were harnessed together, their hands tied behind their backs.
When he saw her coming to welcome him back, Stephen brought his fingers to the brim of his hat, saluting her with a faint nod of his head. She saw the tired hollows under his eyes. A bitter hurt claimed her, Stephen had preferred the bone-weary fatigue of a night’s ride after Apaches to the sleeplessness of lying beside her with all his thoughts, questions, and insecurities.
Her glance strayed from him and was caught by the Apache prisoner riding the near horse. The easy sway of his slouched body to the horse’s rhythm struck a familiar chord. Hannah stared, her steps slowing as she recognized Lutero. She felt flattened, too stunned to think for several heartbeats.
Then all the silent loathing and virulent emotion that she had kept bottled inside came pushing to the surface. The mental and physical tortures she’d suffered, the long months of slavery, the forced marriage were his doing. Hannah gazed at him and saw the source of all her problems. Everything that had gone wrong could be traced directly to him. Stephen’s rejection of her, however reluctant and bitterly fought, and the failure by her peer group to accept her into their fold once more had been caused by Lutero’s capture of her. The whispers, the pointed fingers, the looks that followed her wherever she went, all related directly back to him. Why did he have to show up now?
She walked faster, her hate growing along with the heated emotions feeding it—the wounded pride, the offended dignity, the damaged self-respect, and the remembered fear, the impotence and revulsion. At that moment she hated him with a violent passion.
Her attention was centered on him to the exclusion of all else. She did not smell the hot odor of lathered horses and sweating men or taste the dust in the air, stirred by the scuffling hooves. Her face was taut and her eyes burned blackly; she had doubled her hands into fists. She failed to see Stephen turn in his saddle and look back to discover the object that pulled her so strongly.
And Hannah didn’t see the horse and rider approach nearly at a gallop, didn’t see Cutter sliding off its back as he pulled the horse up so abruptly that it almost sat on its haunches. She saw nothing but Lutero until Cutter put himself in her path. When she tried to go around him, he caught her by the arms.
“Hannah, no.” The low, insistent words cautioned her against any action.
“Let me by,” Her stiff arms pushed against him, straining in angry resistance as she continued to stare over Cutter’s shoulder at Lutero. “Don’t you see who it is? I want him! It’s my right!” She demanded the Apache privilege of being given the life of the one who had wronged her.
He shook her to bring her attention to him, and his hard, blue gaze bored into her. “What is it you want with him, Hannah?” Jake demanded roughly, keeping his voice low. “Do you want to kill him, is that it? What will it solve? What will it change?”
She stopped struggling and bowed her head to elude his eyes, but the rage inside her was not something that responded to reason or logic. “I don’t know.”
Stephen hauled up his tired horse alongside them. “What’s going on here?” he demanded, then looked suspiciously at the Apache. “Who is he? Do you know him?”
“Lutero.” Cutter might as well have said Lucifer.
Wade stiffened, sitting erect in the saddle and reacting to the name as Hannah had known he would. Regret raged through him at the chance he had lost to kill the Apache last night; the time and place were wrong now. He couldn’t do it here in front of the colonel and the other officers, not in cold blood. He had his reputation to consider.
Stephen urged his horse toward the animal Lutero rode. Violence was coiled in him like a vibrating spring of tension. He stared into the dour, brutal face and trembled with the urge to kill the man who stood between him and his wife, the one who had taken her.
The silence stretched, and he became aware of the post’s attention on him and recognized how odd his behavior must seem. He gathered his composure and looked at the surrounding soldiers, who were eyeing him with tired interest.
“I’m bringing charges against this Indian. Take him to the stockade,” Stephen ordered. He didn’t look at Hannah as he rode to the front of the column, where Colonel Bettendorf awaited his report. “Dismiss the detail, Sergeant.”
A pair of troopers swung Lutero out of line. For a moment he faced Hannah. He looked at her. He looked through her. Hannah watched him ride past her, conscious that Cutter had shifted to stand beside her, one hand gripping her arm above the elbow, A rigid tension held her still, while hot, angry tears scalded her eyes.
“I’ll escort you home.” His statement was underlaid with a heavy tone of disapproval.
“No.” She resisted the guiding pressure of his hand, her gaze still following Lutero. “I want to see him locked up.”
Cutter said nothing, merely looking at her for a long moment; then he released a heavy breath and escorted her in the direction of the guardhouse. He didn’t like it, but he’d seen the determined, set of her jaw. She would go—with or without him. They angled across the parade ground as the detail of tired men and horses passed them, heading for the stables.
Standing at attention in front of the colonel, Stephen was conscious of the colonel’s wife and Mrs. Mitchell standing close by. Curtly he gave a brief outline of the night’s mission.
“The wounded driver, where is he?” The colonel looked toward the recovered supply wagon, with four blanket-wrapped bodies lying in the back.
“He was lung-shot, sir. He didn’t make it.”
“And the Apache?”
“He led the raid. He’s responsible for the murder and torture of those miners.” Stephen maintained a stiffly correct posture, raw energy relentlessly driving him beyond the bounds of fatigue.
“Your wife appeared to know him.” The colonel’s look probed for more information. “Is he—“
“Yes, sir.” Stephen interrupted so that he wouldn’t have to hear the rest of the question.
“I see.”
The absently expressed remark stirred Stephen’s anger and bitter resentment. He knew precisely what Colonel Bettendorf was “seeing” in his mind—Hannah and that Apache—and there was nothing Stephen could do about it, no way he could stop people from thinking about his wife and speculating about what the Apache had done to her.
His temper wasn’t helped when he overheard Mrs. Bettendorf murmur, “Did you hear that? The Apache they just brought in is the one who took Mrs. Wade as his squaw.”
Bettendorf said in dismissal, “Good job, Major.”
Stephen responded with a stiff salute, then grasped the pommel and swung into the saddle. His tired horse turned toward the stables, but Stephen reined it in and headed for the guardhouse, spurring the animal into a canter across the quadrangle.
The sun glinted on the deep red fires in Hannah’s dark hair as she stood outside the iron-barred door and looked through the thick grate. Standing to one side of her, Cutter bent his head, lighting a cigar. He shook out the match as Stephen rode up and dismounted from his horse.
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“Why did you bring her here, Cutter?” Stephen demanded in reproof, short-tempered and impatient.
“She insisted,” Cutter replied through his cigar, watchful beneath his indolence.
Stephen crossed to Hannah’s side. “You shouldn’t be here.” His gauntleted hand curved around the back of her arm, and he felt her rigid resistance. His glance stabbed at the dark form sitting on the cot in the deep shadows of the cell’s interior, silent and unmoving.
“What will they do with him?” Hannah didn’t take her gaze from the jailed Lutero.
“We’ll hold him here until the U.S. marshal comes; then he’ll be tried.” The roughness in his voice bespoke his rancor toward such civilized procedures in this Apache’s case. “I’ll take you home.”
She let herself be led away from the guardhouse. Hannah and Stephen walked together, but they were very much separate. Cutter watched them through the wisps of cigar smoke and sensed the friction that split them.
He noted Hooker’s approach and the way he looked after the departing couple. The sergeant came to stand beside Cutter. For a minute, silence held between them; then John T. cast a glance at the prisoner behind the iron-barred door.
“If I’d told him last night that was Lutero, he’d have killed him sure,” John T. stated with a shake of his head that questioned the rthe woman hadightness of his choice to keep silent.
“He would have.” Cutter nodded slowly.
CHAPTER 18
AFTER SHE PLACED HER ORDER, OPHELIA BETTENDORF wandered, to the front of the trader’s store and browsed, over ‘the limited assortment of threads and sewing items. Her glance strayed out the narrow window and paused on the figure walking by. She immediately motioned for her companion.
“Mrs. Mitchell,” she hissed in urgent command, and waited until the woman had joined her to point discreetly. “There she is. I’ll bet she’s going to the guardhouse where they have that Apache locked up. The colonel said it’ll be another week before the marshal comes.”
