Laughter erupted from her.
“Can’t say the Indians don’t have humor,” Bingham drawled.
“I don’t have much humor,” Gordon said, training one of the Mexican’s pistols on Bingham.
“What the hell are you—”
“Taking back what you stole from me. For the moment, though, I’ll take that Springfield.”
Bingham hesitated only long enough to make up his mind that Gordon would shoot him, then passed him the rifle.
Gordon flicked a glance at Mattie. “Find the soldiers’ horses.”
“Oh, señor,” the fat one cried out, “por favor, no nos deje—”
Gordon didn’t ask her for a translation. He could discern the soldiers’ fear at being left stranded without mounts. “Albert, get their rifles,” he said.
She expected some show of resistance, and her son did not disappoint her. He simply stared at the Easterner.
“You heard me, kid.”
No movement from her son. Not even the blink of an eyelid. The salamander could not have remained as motionless.
“Albert,” she said, “do as—”
“Mattie.” More than any words, Gordon’s tone told her he would handle his own challenges. Including those issued by a boy. A boy who would be a man.
Keeping his pistol trained on Bingham, Gordon dropped down until he was eye level with Albert. “I am in charge here. So you will do what I say. If you are able to be in charge, then I will do what you say. Understand?”
Albert surprised her by nodding. Only once. But she knew once was enough. For now. He collected the remaining weapons from the soldiers, who had obeyed Gordon’s motion to sit.
The horses, including Bingham’s and the supply mule, were rounded up and watered. Somewhere along the way, the tent had taken a wrong turn and gotten lost—according to Bingham.
When they had refilled their canteens, they set out again, leaving the two half-naked Mexican soldiers behind at the creek bed.
Now a party of four rather than three, she and Albert and the two men, were once more traveling in the direction of the Huachineras. The mounts of the Mexican soldiers had been hard run and ill fed and would be better off put to pasture. They began blowing wind puffs as Bingham, in the lead, prodded his horse ever upward.
The slopes were shalely, and often Mattie’s mount, a chestnut with a white star and white sock, slipped and fell to its forelegs.
Gradually, the trees grew denser along a nearby stream, with juniper and piñon to offer scented shade. When the western peaks hid the sun, its afterglow filtered through the branches like a shower of gold dust. The place seemed magical.
By unspoken agreement they made camp for the evening. The fire wreathed them with a thin haze of mystical, pinecone-scented smoke.
Over his bowl of beans, Bingham complained about his lack of armament. “If we’re attacked by Indians, there’s no way I can protect myself.”
Gordon swallowed a spoonful of his beans and replied, “Did you think about that when you left us without supplies and weapons?”
“For good reason.”
Mattie hooted. “To be sure. I’d wager God spoke through a burning bush and told ye to abscond with our pack mule.”
Bean juice glistened in his beard. “Like I told you back there that first night we camped, Halpern here is a greenhorn. I could see that teaming up with him was going to cost us our scalps. Now, if I went after his wife on my own, I’d stand a better chance of finding her—and keeping my scalp.”
“Why go when you already had my money?” Halpern demanded.
Bingham looked affronted. “You entrusted me with it, and I wouldn’t—”
“Oh, is that what I did? Entrust you with my money?”
“Hey, I saved you three back there at the creek bed, didn’t I?”
Halpern picked up Bingham’s Springfield and tossed it to him. “Well then, I will entrust you with first shift tonight. I’ll be sleeping lightly. Don’t try to make off again.”
He leaned forward, the empty bowl in his hands dangling between his spread knees. His eyes, tonight the color of sage, gave no quarter. “I want my wife back, Bingham. I had to kill once in order to go after her. If you stand between me and my finding my wife, then you had better start praying to your God.” There was a glint in Gordon’s eye. Even those who didn’t know him, like Bingham and herself, had to know he meant what he’d said.
Reluctant respect for the Easterner was taking root in Mattie. And she wasn’t the only one to experience a change of opinion. Bingham was sizing the man up by a new measuring stick. Albert, she could tell, was wary, but she suspected he was coming to regard the man as something apart from either Indian or white settler. With this man, nothing was black and white.
Gordon Halpern was not weak either in body or spirit. And he was a quick learner. From what he had told her about his childhood, she could surmise that, like herself, he was a survivor. Like herself, he was a cimarron, a wild thing, for all his polished veneer.
She felt uneasy about the loss of antagonism she had immediately felt for the man. Antagonism made for distance, safety. But it almost meant fear.
Was she losing the fear of men that had become so much a part of her? Why should that loss make her uneasy?
Unless it wasn’t that at all. What if, instead, her uneasiness was a result of that emotion that made one the most vulnerable?
What if she was falling in love with Gordon Halpern? “Sonofabitch!” she groaned beneath her breath.
§ CHAPTER SEVEN §
Bingham, his head and face covered by his hat, snored in spurts and accompanied by body twitches.
Albert slept solidly.
Mattie couldn’t. She threw off her bedroll blanket. Then wished she hadn’t. Mountain nights, even in summer, were cool.
Her night vision sought out the solitary figure standing sentinel. It was strange that she should find Halpern’s moonlit profile reassuring when he was so inexperienced with Indian tactics. Still, he had proved himself resourceful and reliable.
At her age, and given her experiences thus far, she could truly say she had no illusions about men. She was no romantic soul. And yet . . . .
She rose and tiptoed across a granite slate toward the silhouette of the man cradling the rifle. She saw more than felt his gaze peel her away from the darkness. He was becoming more attuned to the noises of the night.
He sat down on a fallen cedar and watched her approach. “Relief time already?”
“Not yet.” She sat down on the other end of the log, her arms locked around her knees. “I canna sleep.”
“Happen often?”
She nodded. “I love the night.”
“Yeah. The night makes no distinction between people, does it?”
She peered at him. “People hide in the light of day under clothes and rouge and rings.” She recalled the portrait he had sketched of her. “Ye see with the eyes of the night, Halpern.”
“Oh? Why so?”
“Ye look past the clothes and rouge and rings.”
“I didn’t.” He leaned forward, forearms braced on his thighs. “Not when I was younger.”
She knew he was talking about Diana. “And now that you do? You would change your mind?”
“I don’t waste my time speculating about what’s already done.”
“Aye, the past is the past. What about now?”
He turned moon-gilded eyes on her. “Diana is a good woman.”
The answer was a non sequitur, but they both understood that what was not being said was the real issue. “What brought ye two to the Arizona Territory?” she asked.
“A trip out West, to new environs. An attempt on my part to save our marriage.”
She knew she shouldn’t pry, but she asked anyway. “Because of her reluctance to . . . uhh . . . share the marital bed?”
“The very thing that she said had initially attracted her to me became a repulsion to her. In the early stages of our courtship, she was mor
e fascinated with my boxing than she was with my painting. It was as if my sweating, battered body magnetized her hands . . . .”
Embarrassed, she remained silent. Dias muire! She wished she had a cigarette.
“Of course, there were other things that contributed to our marital problems,” he said after a moment. “I, like most artists, do not earn enough to enable Diana and me to live in a style to which she was accustomed. In turn, I couldn’t relate to her friends. My unvarnished opinions sent too many of them packing.” The way his mouth twisted beneath his mustache told her he was lost in unpleasant memories. “How did your wife become a captive of Nantez?”
“We had arranged a side trip to the gold and silver mines of the Territory of New Mexico. While in Silver City, I was approached by a store owner. A man named Roy Bean. He had noted my build, the way I moved. He found out my name. Told me he had heard about me and wanted to promote a boxing match. I turned him down.
“Later that day, Diana and I rode six miles north to a little town in the tall pines, Piños Altos. A rough and tough town of gold bonanzas. It was raining.
We had ducked into the schoolhouse, a log cabin that leaked. The children and the waiting got on her nerves. She stepped outside for a breath of fresh air—and into the path of Nantez’s warriors.”
Oh God, but Mattie could imagine what the woman must have felt. The disbelief that it really was happening, then the monstrous terror that this was no mere nightmare.
“The next day, when I could get no cooperation from the command at Fort Bayard, I went to see Roy Bean.”
“Made a pact with the devil, ye did.”
“I think I made that pact when I let Diana’s mother become my patroness. Mrs. Harold Ashley of Pittsburgh’s Arts Society. At one time I had been impressed by the name. I was nineteen, and the name sounded like an incantation. With that name on my lips, I could summon all sorts of wizardry and magic and, yes, even realized dreams.”
It was strange to listen to the man’s educated speech and know that an untamed animal lurked beneath that civilized mask. “Was she in favor of your marriage to Diana?”
He didn’t reply at once. “Diana’s mother was more a philanderer than philanthropist. In other words, she specialized in affairs. I suppose my marriage to Diana was an affront to her own . . . desirability.”
“I see.” She wanted to say, So ye, too, have let yourself be used in order to keep a dream alive. “Ye must have loved Diana very, very much to risk your painting career.”
He shifted the rifle nestled in the crook of his arm and leaned forward to better study her face. “Why all the questions?”
She averted her gaze and looked around until she saw a shadowy form in the branches of a juniper. The ghostly whistle confirmed the apparition to be an owl. “I . . . I was curious about what it must have been like for Diana. For a woman to feel . . . totally absorbed, loved, desired, by a man.”
“You never have been, have you?”
“No.” The solitary word was so . . . so solitary. She elaborated. “Me husband . . . I fear he was more absorbed by me family’s finances.”
“After all these years, you must be very—”
Afraid that he might say something that would break down her wall of defense, she blurted, “Curious. I am curious about what it must be like to feel a man’s gentle touch.”
Then she surprised herself. “Would ye kiss me, Gordon?”
His eyes widened, but he did not betray by speech whatever had gone through his mind. “Most people hardly find my touch gentle.”
Her pride flared. “I’m asking for a kiss, nothing more.”
He stood, propped the rifle against the cedar and walked toward her.
She held up a restraining hand. “Wait. I didn’t mean for you to—”
“Will you shut up?” He took her raised hand and pulled her to her feet. Placing his big, scarred hands on either side of her face, he drew her close. “Mattie, for God’s sake, close your eyes.”
She complied. Her heart did a drum roll.
“That’s better.”
Then she felt his lips touch hers, with such infinite tenderness. She ceased to breathe. Ceased to think. She only felt. For the first time in years, she let herself feel.
Instead of trying to control her responses, she let them control her for once. Her legs trembled. Tears seeped from her eyes. Dias muire, but the feeling was so good. So wonderful! Her breath broke from her in a sob.
At once, he released her and stepped back. Consternation showed in his lowered brows. “My God,” he said softly. “My God.”
Her hands balled. “If ye say just one word of pity, I swear I’ll—”
He caught one of her knotted hands in each of his. “No. I wasn’t going to. You just startled me. I had forgotten that people are capable of such pent-up passion. You see, mine has gone. And with its leaving, my creativity and my imagination went also. My paintings are as lackluster as my heart.”
“Oh, no. The sketch ye did of me . . . it was grand.” Feeling suddenly shy, she tugged her hands from his. “I’m tired now.” She brushed past him, but after taking several steps, she turned and glanced back at him over her shoulder. “Thank ye, Gordon.”
“For the kiss?”
“For reminding me that I am a woman. G’night, now.”
* * *
A disgruntled pair eyed her the next morning. Did both Bingham and Albert know of her tryst with Gordon during the night? Or was guilt making her unreasonably suspicious?
By the half-light of dawn, she studied the two across the breakfast fire. Albert wouldn’t look at her. His lower lip was thrust out in a little boy’s pout.
He had found her scrubbing her arms and face in the creek earlier. A ritual that she usually performed carelessly.
Last night had changed all that. After all these years, she was aware of her body again. She had rejected any aesthetic qualities about it, thinking of it only in terms of its functional dictates.
Bingham sipped from his tin mug. Occasionally, he spit coffee grounds into the fire. “Coffee tastes like the devil’s brew.”
She took a sip of her own and nearly spewed out the fire. “Ye gods, ’tis strong enough to float eggs! Must be the hickory nut.”
“Hickory nut?” Gordon asked, smiling at her reaction. His own mood that morning had been quiet, reflective.
“A secret of old Sam Kee’s. He uses it to flavor his tea.”
“This ain’t tea, gal.”
She felt too lighthearted to let Bingham bother her. “Then ye fix the coffee tomorrow.”
“How many more days of travel do you think we have before we reach Nantez’s stomping grounds?” Gordon asked the preacher.
Bingham chewed thoughtfully on a piece of rancid bacon. “Depends.”
“On what?” Gordon said, impatience edging his voice now.
“On how fast we travel, for one. You and the gal here were slowing me—”
He broke off whatever he had been about to say and stared past Albert at some fixed point. Slowly he set down his cup and picked up his Winchester. He brought it to his shoulder and looked down the sight.
Frightened, she glanced beyond Albert, saw in the dew-wet tufts of grass a snake.
“No!” her son said.
In a single instant, he bolted from his squatting position and knocked the Winchester from Bingham’s hands. Then he whirled and picked up the snake that was slithering toward the next tuft. He held up the twisting reptile. “It does not poison.” With that he tossed it into the underbrush.
Mattie sighed. Albert wasn’t a bad boy, no matter what the teacher made him out to be. She believed that fervently. True he was wild and often distracted. When she would try to help him with his sums, he wouldn’t listen, or at least didn’t seem to care to.
She also knew he was sensitive and kind to all God’s creatures. With the exception maybe of the white man. He didn’t trust him. Why should he? The white man had been less than welcoming to the little b
oy.
She gave thanks at her inner altar that he had none of Nantez’s cretin appearance. Her son was beautiful. Not in the usual child-fresh-beauty way. But with the strong, sculpted features and piercing, somber handsomeness of the Apache’s Athapascan ancestors.
“Awful jittery aren’t you, Bingham?” Gordon said, peering at the preacher through the steam rising off his own cup. A wry smile lifted the ends of his pirate’s mustache.
“We’re trespassing on Apache territory now. What’s left of my scalp rises like a dog’s hackles.”
Gordon set down his half-empty cup and stretched out his long, muscular legs. “Never heard of anyone surviving a scalping.”
Beneath the brim of his hat, Bingham’s eyes were as hard as stone. “I survived because of the maggots.”
“Maggots?”
“Yeah. Maggots. This gal here scooped them from a dead dog rotting in the sun. Put them on my exposed skull to eat away the rotting flesh.”
Gordon swallowed. He looked as if he were going to be sick.
Mattie had to smile. “I had watched the shaman treat a warrior’s wound the same way.”
She glanced at the preacher, wondering if he would take her words with good humor. “Bingham was burning with fever and ranting about Satan’s fiery hell. Looked to me like he was dying. I figured the maggots couldn’t make him any worse than he already was.”
Bingham turned his gray stare on her. “You made me worse than I was.”
He had been idealistic. A young man full of life and love for all of God’s creations. After his ordination, he had set out to change the world: to bless the poor and heal the souls of the sick and guide aright those who had gone astray. The portion of the world given to him to change had been the wilds of northwestern Mexico.
In his youth he was an intelligent young man and handsome in a slender, ascetic way. The third of nine children of a blacksmith from Ohio. And Mexico was a long way off. Still, with God in his heart, he knew the world would be his home.
In Santo Tomas, he was invited to dinner at the sprawling hacienda of the wealthy Scots engineer, Archibald Chisholm. Beneath the sala’s hundred-candle chandelier, he first glimpsed the young woman he knew that God had selected to be his mate. Mattie was playing a Scottish air on a grand piano hauled all the way from Mexico City over the Camino Real.
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