Apache Fire

by Raine Cantrell

  It was her sister-in-law who finally opened the door, her body blocking the way. “Angie, I tried to talk to him, but he refused to listen to me. Grant wants you gone. He made—”

  “Gone? What are you saying?”

  “Your brother said you shamed him in front of the soldiers. That you were with one of those savages, and even defended him after he attacked Grant.”

  “Grant was wrong. I only told the truth.”

  Kathleen shot a look over her shoulder, but didn’t move from her place. “Your things are packed and in the barn. He wanted me to leave them out here, but I couldn’t do that.”

  “Stand aside, Kathleen. Let me talk to my brother.” But Angie found that her frail-looking sister-in-law was strong enough to stop her.

  “He doesn’t want to talk to you, doesn’t want to see you, either. He just wants you gone.”

  “And where does he expect me to go?” Anger sharpened Angie’s voice, and she welcomed its heat, to warm her against the night’s cold, and an even more chilling dread that filled her.

  “I liked you, Angie. I never blamed you for what happened. I grieved for the loss of your child with you. But Grant is my husband, the father of my children. I can’t go against him.”

  There was a feeling of disbelief inside Angie. This could not be happening to her. She was to start a new life, she was to heal the pain of the past. Now Grant was throwing her out because she spoke up against an injustice? It didn’t make sense, none of the day made sense.

  Kathleen leaned closer. “I put together some food and a blanket for you. I wish it could be different, but you know he’s a hard man when his mind’s made up.”

  “Yes, I know. And thank you, Kathleen. I’ll go now.”

  “Where will you go?”

  But Angie didn’t answer her as she led the mules toward the barn to get her belongings. How could she answer, when she didn’t know?

  Angie didn’t discover until morning how vicious her brother could be.

  She had driven the buckboard a little ways off the trail and, beneath the shelter of sapling oaks, made a pillow of one of her carpetbags, wrapping herself in the blanket Kathleen had provided. This was one morning when she did not watch the rise of the sun. But the hard bed and her turbulent thoughts had made the little sleep she had a weary battle.

  The small parcel that her sister-in-law had left her contained the bread and cheese that broke her fast. Later, Angie never recalled why she reached for her other bag. It was the one she had never unpacked, the one holding her watercolors and charcoal, the sketches she had made of Amy, and of Tim, all the precious memories she had left of her past.

  Grant had destroyed them. The papers were ripped apart.

  Everything was crushed and broken. Angie wept for its loss, then walked out to the land and scattered what remained. She never looked back as she drove the mules toward the trail.

  It was nearly six weeks before Niko learned what had happened to her. He was part of one of the small raiding parties that crossed into Sonora, where unguarded herds were. The stock was driven to Janos, where the animals were exchanged for needed clothing and food, which was then loaded onto Indianowned horses and packed back to the reservation through the Dragoon Mountains. Rarely was there any risk.

  But Geronimo had brought back a boy from Mexico, and word quickly spread. Niko was there when Tom Jeffords came to get the boy to return him to his family. As ever, Red Beard was welcomed in Geronimo’s camp.

  Only once did his voice rise in anger over the boy being taken and the continuation of the raids. “I’ve denied the raids to Howard, and the general is beginning to question my word. I’ve written to the commissioner, too, and denied the raids to the press and public. I can’t do my job as agent and get fair treatment for all the Inde’ if you will not stop the raids.”

  “My people are hungry. Friendship is an empty word.” Geronimo was short, as were many of the Apache. His hair, parted in the middle, hung down to his shoulders. His small, black eyes were set close to the bridge of his nose, and his mouth was a thin, angry slash against his coppery skin.

  “If Geronimo has closed his heart to hear me, then I can say no more. I still wish you good. I have always been a friend of the people.”

  Jeffords rose and motioned the young Mexican boy to his side.

  “I believe you. There are too few of your kind.”

  Niko heard Geronimo’s last words, but he waited near the horses for Jeffords.

  “Red Beard, I would have words with you.”

  “Niko? I might have known you’d be here. When I heard what happened—”

  “It is past.”

  “The hell it is. Grant Cowan put a price on your head. Said you raped his sister.”

  “Inde’ no rape.” Fury simmered, dangerously close to exploding. Niko looked away, swiftly regaining control. “Does the woman claim this rape?”

  “Angie Wallace left her brother’s house, or some say he threw her out that same night. She stayed with Mary Ten Horses for a few days at the post. They came to see me at San Simon. You heard that we moved the agency there?”

  “I heard.” Within him there was a need to hear more of what had happened to her. He had to wait for Jeffords to tell it his own way.

  “Cochise is ill. This business with the raids has got to cease. I’ve got the commissioner on my back, the army demanding to be turned loose, and now this stealing of a boy to smooth over.” He could barely make out Niko’s face in the wavering light spilling from the fires.

  “I know your honor, Niko. You would never have touched a white woman. She’s a strange one, all right. I wouldn’t have given her permission at all, but there was something about her that just wouldn’t let me refuse.”

  “What was this thing you did?”

  “I let her have the old agency house at Sulphur Springs.”

  “She is there, on Chiricahua land?”

  “She’s safe enough, if you’re worried. Mary drives out every few days to see her. There’s been no trouble with your band over her staying there. But you’d better keep away. I can’t guarantee—”

  Niko spun away from him. She was there. All this time he had worried, waiting for word of her, and she was living at Sulphur Springs. Why had no one told him?

  He walked off, ignoring Jeffords’s calls, his hand pressed to his medicine bag, where a button and a curl of hair were all he had of her.

  He had a promise to keep.

  Niko left at first light. No one attempted to stop him, for such was not the way in this renegade band. He traveled light, knowing he could live off the land as he made his way to the Mule Pass Mountains. In the heat of the day, he sought shelter and rested, but the moment his shadow was faint upon the earth, he was moving northeast again.

  From the Mule Pass he headed for the Dragoons, where Cochise’s stronghold lay to the northwest, but he would not endanger them with a visit until he had spoken to his brethren.

  Steady rains fell, for the summer had been an unusually wet one. He was at home here, in this mountainous land with the mescal, the piñon and the oak trees. There was little of the big game left, and the spoils from the raids of the year before, stowed in caves and caches, were long gone.

  How did the woman live? Who hunted for her? Who shared her fire?

  The questions were a goad to spur him on, despite the danger to himself.

  In natural stone bowls, he quenched his thirst with the sweet rainwater and wondered why he had kept himself from the young widows who had escaped into Mexico to know freedom with Geronimo. The answer was there, in the clear reflection of the water, for he saw not himself, but a woman who caught the long rays of the sun within her hair.

  She had accepted a man, and borne him a child. Niko had respected her time of grief. As the seasons were marked by the gathering of food for the body, so, too, did time allow for other needs to flourish.

  His body had healed. It was time, then, for h
im to know her as a man knows his woman.

  Chapter 7

  He had been schooled to wait. Restless prowled his mind and body as the late afternoon slipped away. From the shelter of a shallow cave above, he watched the rain fall on the wooden building that had once housed the agency. As far as he could see across the land in the drizzle, there was no sign of life.

  To lessen the risk to both of them, he had sworn he would wait for the cover of darkness to make his presence known to her. To make sure that his visit was kept secret, he had tethered his horse in a grove of oaks, and come the rest of the way on foot.

  The damp of the rain did not matter. He had been cold and wet before, but never had the smoke curling from a chimney offered tempting warmth. Lantern light revealed her moving within. He resisted the strong pull that urged him to leave his place and rush down there. It was not for a warrior to be open with his feelings.

  When the last of the light was reflected in the puddles below, it was time.

  Niko knew the whites’ practice of banging a fist upon the door, but it was not his way. He stood before the place she had made her home. “Iszáń, will you welcome me?”

  Inside, Angie nearly dropped the pan of heated water she was holding. All day she had fought this strange feeling of excitement. To hear his voice, the voice of her dreams, brought one hand up to touch her hair. The other she pressed to still a quick-beating heart.

  Lifting the bar from the door, she opened it and peered outside to see him. He stood with legs planted apart, straight and tall, his arms at his sides. She shivered despite the heat of the wood stove, and scanned the area behind him.

  “Come quickly, Niko. It is dangerous for you to come here.”

  “Do you share your fire with another?”

  She repeated the words to herself, and shook her head when she understood his meaning. “There is no one here with me. Please, come inside.”

  He was as she remembered, overwhelmingly male, filling her small house with his presence. Gone was the nut brown shirt. He wore the faded gray of rain clouds, tucked into buckskins.

  She closed the door and bolted it, then turned to lean against the solid wood, seeing her home through his eyes as he stood and looked around.

  Angie felt pride in the trades she had made with her carpetbags and some clothing. It was all she had had left. Her wedding ring and two pairs of earrings had been long gone before she arrived in the territory.

  Her needs were few, her wants simple. She cataloged her possessions as he moved to touch them. A pan to heat water, a coffeepot, the frying pan. He picked up the fork and turned it over and over, as he did with the knife and spoon. His finger grazed her single plate and the handle of her cup. They were the sum of her kitchen supplies.

  Her gaze followed his to the two windows, bare of curtains, of any covering. On the floor by the small pot-bellied stove was the rag rug she had started fashioning from clothes beyond repair. The shelving she had made was crude boards salvaged from one of the shacks, separated by rocks she had hunted for their flat sides.

  She caught a faint smile on his lips as he reached out to touch the two baskets. They had been a gift from Mary Ten Horses. The bucket had been left behind when the agency was moved—another of her finds, which allowed her to draw water.

  But he stared the longest at the blanket covering the thick pile of sweet grass that made her bed.

  Niko turned to her then, and she bore his darkeyed study with as much calm as she could muster. A most difficult task, she discovered. Her knees felt as if they would give way if she moved, her heart seemed to triple its beat, and the heat of his gaze sent an answering warmth to chase the dreary chill of the night away.

  She still wore white woman’s shoes, but her skirt fell against the flare of womanly hips. There was no longer the scent of the stiffened layers of clothing that had covered her the first night. She wore no cloth belt, her shirt hung outside the skirt like the Chiricahua women.

  “Your hair is as straight as my own.”

  “I no longer have the pins to keep it in place. That’s what made it curl, Niko.”

  “You are changed. There is peace within you.”

  “Is that why you’ve come? To see—”

  “I have come to know why you live here.”

  Without a tinge of the self-pity she had felt those first few weeks, Angie told him what had happened.

  “To be cast out is a grave matter, iszáń,” he said when she was done. “There is no one to care for you.”

  She stared at the small scar above his eye, the only visible sign she found of his beating. When he rephrased his last words into a question, she stopped musing and answered him.

  “I care for myself, Niko. I am learning how, and liking it a great deal.”

  “Then you have chosen to walk your path alone?”

  “I’ve not been given a choice. And I’ve been rude to you. Please, sit upon my blanket, I’ll make us tea. Mary has shown me how to collect the right herbs and grasses, and I even have some yucca buds dried for sweetening.”

  He sat, because she wished it. The scent of her rose from the sweet grass and the blanket, clouding his senses when he needed them clear. There was much he had to say to her, much more he wished to show her, but that would have to wait. She was eager to show off her new skills, and share with him this home she had made. He could not steal her pleasure in this.

  “Mary promised to take me with the women to the mountains when they collect the chokeberries. She said that when summer ends we gather the fruit of the giant cactus, the screwbean mesquite beans that will allow me to have flour, and walnuts.”

  Angie knew there were more, but his grunt could have meant anything, including a desire for an end to her chatter. Since the water was already hot, it came to a boil quickly in the coffeepot, and she added small pinches of her supplies to make the tea. When it was done, she no longer had an excuse not to face him. She brought the one cup to him.

  “In your house there is but one place to sit, one cup to drink, and one man and one woman. Will you sit and share with me, iszáń?”

  “Why do you call me woman? My name is Angie. Is it hard for you to say?”

  “It is the white name for you. I have given you my own.”

  Angie sat, because her legs wouldn’t hold her any longer. She toyed with covering her shoes with her hem, her back very straight, while she wondered what name he called her.

  Her gaze was anxious, so Niko sipped from the cup, finding the tea weak, and much too sweet for him. “It is good. Mary has taught you well.” And for the first time he heard her laugh.

  “Niko lies well. Mary said my tea is weak and far too sweet for an Apache.”

  “Niko is not Mary Ten Horses.”

  She fought the smile coming again to her mouth, and nodded. “Niko can never be Mary Ten Horses. I don’t want you to be, but I don’t want you to he to me. Tell me why you have come so far. Did you know that my brother has lied about you and set a reward for your capture?”

  He sipped again from the cup and handed it over to her. Angie saw that he had turned it for her to drink where his lips had touched. She had never shared an intimacy like this, and his dark gaze compelled her to drink as he had. When she managed to swallow past the lump in her throat, he nodded as if satisfied.

  “It is an ugly thing my brother has accused you of.”

  “Even with the heat of youth, never have I forced a woman to take me inside her. This thing he says I do brings no pleasure to a man and less to a woman.”

  Blushing to the roots of her hair, Angie didn’t know where to look. Such frank talk was beyond her.

  Seeing how uncomfortable he had made her, Niko took the cup from her hand and set it on the floor beside him. “You have no male for me to talk to. There is no one of your family to bring a gift to. It is for me to speak to you of the feeling I have. Is it the iszáń’s wish to hear my words?”

  Was it? Angie t
hought of the lonely nights when she dreamed of him, and the mornings when she wondered why. Did she desire him as a woman would desire a man she wanted to have as husband? It was a question she had asked herself many times in the past weeks. But she couldn’t lie to herself. There was something between them, unseen, but strongly felt.

  His touch was gentle as he lifted her chin so that he could see her face. “The iszáń is not pleased to hear that I have feeling for her?”

  “I am pleased,” she whispered, holding his intense gaze with her own.

  “The grief in your heart is no more?”

  “There will always be grief in my heart for the child that I was not strong enough to protect, but I have come to accept that it was not to be. The pain is gone.” She inhaled the scent of the rain on his skin, and felt the fine trembling of his hand, still touching her face. She wanted him to kiss her, and as the need sharpened, she realized that she didn’t know if the Apache shared kisses.

  Like the sweetest of the ripe wild berries, her mouth tempted him to taste. Niko was thankful he now wore the soft, supple deerskin breechcloth over his buckskins, so that she could not see how the desire for her brought life to his manhood, like a spark to dry tinder.

  He moved to touch her, stroking the hair that gleamed like the gold the white man killed to possess. Not once had she looked away from him.

  “The man that held the iszáń’s heart, does he still dwell within?”

  There was a hushed delicacy to his voice that wrapped itself around her, soft and warm and gentle, but demanding the truth just the same.

  “I cared for him with the first love a young woman gives to a man. The memory remains, faded and cold—”

  “Poor comfort when the winter winds blow from the mountains.”

  “Just so.” Angie closed her eyes. “It is said that Niko has never taken a wife, though many have approached you with offers.”

  He smiled, and his fingers learned the curve of her jaw, the slant of her cheek, the arch of her brow. Her quickened breath became his own, her scent all he knew, as he leaned closer.