All too vividly, he recalled the tale of the finger bone she carried in her pouch. “Dare I trust a knife-wielding woman?”
“I’m good at this. One of me duties while captive was to pluck out Nantez’s sparse beard. I used tweezers made of bent strips of tin.”
Her voice conveyed absolutely no emotion. He studied her face. Her upper lip, full with only a hint of an indentation, was sheened with perspiration from the afternoon humidity.
“You talk as if what happened to you was commonplace,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I would feel damned bitter. Resentful as hell.”
“I hate Nantez with a passion equal to the love I feel for our son. For Albert, me heart is engorged with love, if that gives you any idea of what I feel for Nantez.”
“I can understand that hate. For the longest time, I hated my mother for abandoning me. Later, I learned she had died in a western railroad town, Cheyenne. Died drunk, penniless, used up. Now I can only think how miserable she must have been. I guess I feel sorry for her.”
Her hand worked deftly, using the same firm but light stroke of an artist. “She was free to choose.”
“Is there nothing you fear, Mattie?”
For a moment she was silent. “Being alone. I know that now. I want to enjoy me life all the time without feeling guilty, Halpern. I want to no longer feel the need to judge meself for mistakes and failures. The flaws in meself that keep cropping up.”
“The past is over.”
“Your mustache needs clipping.”
“Your hair needs combing,” he said out of the side of his mouth. She was shaving his jaw line, close, maybe too close.
“Why?”
“Because – because for the same reason my mustache needs clipping. Because a person has certain standards. Good grooming is one.”
“I like me hair wild and unconstrained. It suits me nature.”
She nicked his neck, just below his jaw. “Oow!”
“Hold still,” she said.
He studied her face. Her expression was one of concentration. “Look, Mattie, everything changes. Even one’s nature. You’ve got to surrender to life someday.”
She rose like smoke. “The day I do, you’ll see me hair coifed tighter than chicken wire.”
§ CHAPTER NINE §
No one talked now. Every sense was focused on being alert.
The air was cool and dry. The sky was light blue, the shade of the eyes on a China doll Mattie had had as a child. The double squawk of the ring-neck pheasant as it accompanied the whir of wing-flapping broke the monotonous sound of hoof on rock and hard-packed earth. Resinous scents of pine and juniper and firs tickled the nostrils.
All these were reassuring sights and sounds and smells. There was nothing to suggest that danger and even death waited at the end of the wide, chaparral-covered canyon or perched on its high, craggy rims like vultures. Even those birds of prey had deserted the sky for lack of warm air currents.
Or had they yielded their roosts to a more malevolent stalker? The travelers were now in definite territory claimed by the Netdahe Apaches, having crossed Rio Bavispe, which was actually more a meandering mountain creek than river.
Mattie’s floppy sombrero hung from its string tie around her neck and bounced against the small of her back in cadence with her mount’s measured gait. She was perspiring, but it wasn’t generated by heat. It was purely from fear.
If Nantez should recapture her. . . .
She mentally shrugged it off. Why was she worrying? Either he would kill her or she would kill herself.
No, that wasn’t true. She had discovered life too dear to surrender. When once she could take pleasure in the sight of a painted-lady butterfly amid a stinking, flea-infested pile of dozing camp dogs, well . . . life always had new meaning.
She glanced at Gordon. He reminded her of a sketch she had seen of D’Artagnan in Dumas’s The Three Musketeers. That long, glossy hair and sweeping devil-may-care mustache. His black charro hat needed only a plume. The earring was out of keeping with the look, though. It belonged on a Caribbean pirate.
Was he as noble as D’Artagnan? As steadfast in love as Cyrano de Bergerac? As bold as Blackbeard? Aye, Gordon Halpern was all that. Witness his hero’s journey to the underworld to bring back his lady love.
Would that she were that lady love. Alas, such was not the case. She could vividly imagine the lovely Diana. Hair the gold-silver shade of moon dust. Eyes the prismatic blue of Mexican opals. Skin as translucent as Salome’s veils.
Daydreaming as she was, she almost missed the way her mount’s ears cocked suddenly. She hauled back at the reins. “Listen!”
At once, the other three heeded her call. Only Bingham’s eyes questioned her.
“I’m not sure,” she whispered in response to that unspoken inquiry. “Something’s ahead, though.”
“What now?” Gordon asked.
“If ’tis Apaches, they’ve already seen us.”
“No use walking smack dab into their trap,” Bingham said and spit a brown squirt of tobacco juice.
She lost her patience. “If they’re here, we’re already in it, fool.”
The look he turned on her was like gray smoke swirling up out of hell. “A fool is it? Better a fool than a lost soul, gal. You—”
“Cut it, Bingham,” Gordon said. “Now is not the time for a discourse on sins and salvation. Well, Mattie? Do we turn back?”
Dias muire, she didn’t know. Her horse’s ears no longer exhibited that alerted position. “Maybe what was out there was something as harmless as a mule deer.”
“Maybe as lethal as a steel-tipped arrow,” the preacher growled low.
This was what she was getting paid for, wasn’t it? To take Halpern to his beloved. “I’ll go on ahead, see if I pick up any telltale signs.”
“No,” Halpern said. “We’re in this together.” He kneed his horse’s flanks, and the mount started forward again. “What are we looking for?”
“Could be a hundred things,” Bingham said.
She kept her gaze on the ground directly ahead. “Could be what ye don’t see.”
“Like what?” Gordon asked.
She talked, if only to ease her bowstring-taut nerves. “Try following the tracks of an Indian. Often, ye will find they end abruptly. As if Bingham’s God snatched the Indian from the face of the earth in mid-step.”
Beside her, she saw Albert’s mouth crimp in the barest of smiles. He had lost two teeth, and new ones were just coming through.
She knew he was taking delight in this particular trick of his father’s people. Maybe even taking pride. As much as she resented it, she knew this pride was important to her son if he was ever to come to terms with his heritage.
Of course, Bingham and his God would condemn pride as a monstrous sin. Well, Bingham’s God wasn’t hers. When in the midst of her hell-on-earth, she had done a lot of praying at an inner altar. Her God was inside. And outside. Maybe, more like the Apache’s concept of a Superior Power. Moving through all in all.
Surely, it was not in Nantez.
“What does the Indian do?” Gordon asked. “Swing up into an overhead branch?”
“Good guess. But not if ye are traveling on the plains or desert. In that case, the Indian simply backtracks in his own footprints and takes a different path that is unlikely to be detected.”
The canyon began to narrow. Its chaparral crowded the trail and forced their horses through its funnel of overgrowth. A definite site if ever for an ambush. The trail bent with the curve of the canyon walls then abruptly opened onto an abandoned cornfield. A flutter in the withered stalks brought her and the others up short. She put up a silencing hand.
A moment passed. Dry, silvery cornstalks rustled slightly. She studied a sycamore’s leaves. No breeze stirred them. Signaling the others to wait, she dismounted, passed the reins to Albert, and approached the rows of cornstalks.
God, please let it be a raccoon. Not an Apache or a jaguar.
Behind her
, she heard a noise. She gasped and turned to look. Halpern and Bingham had raised their rifles, cocked them, and trained their sights on the cornrows just ahead of her.
Reassured, she crept forward. She was careful to avoid stepping on leaves or old corn husks. She parted the stalks with a minimum of betraying noise. Silky corn tassels tickled her nose. She stifled a sneeze. Somewhere, a bee hummed.
When she was no more than four or five rows deep into the corn field, she heard more distinct noises. At once, she froze. Sweat instantly trickled down her ribs and collected at her waist band.
Then a sense of familiarity with the sounds she was hearing prompted her to part the corn fronds. Ahead, where the cornstalks lay flattened, two horses grazed. They were partially hidden by stalks, but she could tell they were saddled. She released her pent-up breath.
Still, she was careful. The visitors might not be Indians, but they could be Mexicans soldiers, who were just as formidable. Or almost. Macabre memories made her nervous all over again.
Her gaze roving from left to right and back again, she crept toward the two horses. Where were their owners? Nearby?
The gelding paused, looked up suddenly. Had the horse heard her—or something else?
Then . . . Dias muire, yes! . . . those saddlebags, she had purchased them at Zechendorfs. Just beyond the gelding, she could identify the rump of her spotted pony!
In her joy, she stepped out into the clearing. Her sudden appearance spooked the horses. They turned and trotted off in the opposite direction.
“No! Pepper!” All she could think about was the disappearance of her precious foot balm.
She sprinted after them. They trotted down out of the field and along the dry creek bed of the Rio de Janos. Rocks jabbed through her thin moccasin soles. The faster she ran, the faster the horses’ gait.
Then her ankle gave way beneath her. She stumbled, fell on all fours, and scraped her hands. She sat back on her haunches, looking at her stinging, raw palms. She started to cry. “Sonofabitch!”
Behind her, she heard hooves drum against gravel as they swept past on either side of her, and thundered on in pursuit of the runaway horses.
“Mother?”
She lifted her face from her hands and looked up into her son’s face. There was confusion in his eyes. He had never seen her cry. “I’m all right, Albert. Really. Here, help me stand. I twisted me ankle.”
With her son’s aid, she took the reins he had held for her and mounted the horse. They rode for some fifteen minutes, and she began to fear the two men had run into more trouble.
Then, farther down the canyon, she could see Gordon and Bingham cantering back. They had the two runaway horses with them.
When Gordon was close enough, he called out, “Come along. We found a great campsite for the evening. On a knoll, overlooking a spot where the water runs.”
The place was where the canyon emptied into a vista of mountains and river-carved valleys. A gradual descent of hills was contrasted with a sheer thousand-foot cascade of water.
The trail down took them away from thundering falls to a high plain, clustered with towering trees and bisected by a tributary of the falls.
By the time they reached the spot she had to hobble from Pepper to a mound Bingham had created of saddle, horse blankets, and packs. All pleasure in recovering her pony was lost in her pain.
Her ankle had swollen so much that the moccasin had stretched as tightly as animal skin on a war shield. She took the knife from the sheath at her thigh, and slit the moccasin from knee to sole. The deer hide fell open, revealing her already discoloring flesh.
Gordon dropped his own saddle and bags nearby. “In the creek you go.”
“What?”
“I’ve had enough swollen hands and eyes to know whereof I speak, my dear lady.”
His dear lady?
“The mountain-cold water will stop the swelling. Then, we apply heat to drain the blood back out of the area.”
Before she could protest, he bent and scooped her up into his arms, effortlessly, gingerly, as if she were that priceless China doll of her childhood. Automatically, her arms went around his neck, but at once it seemed odd. She felt like both grinning and weeping.
She hadn’t been cared for like this since she was a little girl and fell from the wrought-iron arch over a gate she had been climbing. Her father had carried her into the house. “Acch, me bairn, ye are glaikit! A foolish one. I shall have your burn tanned royally, mind ye!”
Gordon carried her to the river. Shading the rippling water were smooth, white-trunked sycamores, pliant willows, and dark, gnarly ash. He knelt on the edge of the bank, gently took her ankle and held it down in the shallow, swift current. She gasped. “The water! ’Tis freezing!”
“Bingham’s starting a fire. A heated blanket ought to finish off that swelling.” He probed the mounded flesh around her ankle bone. “Don’t think it’s broken.”
She didn’t either. “Ye are a kind man, Gordon Halpern.”
He looked from her ankle up to her face. “No. I am not kind. Not totally. Understand me now. I am. That is all. I am. And I will do whatever it takes to get my wife back. Do you understand that, also?”
She nodded, thinking that she knew what she was doing. That she was going into this adventure with eyes wide open. That she would allow herself to fall in love, fully, for the one and only time in her life. That she knew this man was representative of all the base emotions and all that was fine in a human being. But that he sought to express the latter. That was all that could be asked of anyone.
“Aye, Halpern. I understand. More than ye realize.” He glowered at her, swung her up into his arms, and headed back to the campsite.
Albert appeared to be emptying cans from the mule’s pack, but his gaze clung to Mattie and Gordon. If his already swarthy face could darken, it did.
Gordon eased her down onto the improvised chaise longue and passed her a plate of unsavory-smelling stew before settling across the fire from her with his own.
Bingham paused in ladling a glob of the burnt stew onto a tin plate and flicked her and Gordon a scowl. “I wasn’t hired to do the cooking.”
“I didn’t hire you to make off with the supplies either, Bingham.”
Between bites, Albert muttered, “Supplies? Supplies is for everyone. No one owns supplies in Apache camps.”
Gordon cast him a sidewise glance. “You have a point there, kid.”
Mattie said nothing, but she was perceiving how desperate Albert was to find his place. Apparently, he had made up his mind that it was going to be with his Indian bloodline. If and when they found Nantez’s camp, she would have to keep an eagle’s eye on her son.
“The Apaches defile all that is holy and sacred in God’s Book,” Bingham said. “Pity is a feeling unknown to them. Cruelty is ingrained in them. A brave who can kill without being killed and can steal without being caught is the most respected and admired.”
Disgust made the food even more unpalatable than it already was. She tossed her plate down beside her. “The only difference between the Apache and the Christian, Bingham, is that the Apache openly confesses and practices his creed of cruelty, whereas the Christian hypocritically professes mercy and honesty and at the same time surpasses the Apache in deeds of dishonor and brutality.”
Albert had never heard her speak thus. Across the campfire, the expression in his eyes changed, like an illumination.
She knew he loved her, but he also saw her as the enemy sometimes. She was female and white, both of which he associated with weakness. Yet her simple statement in defense of the Apaches had knocked down one of his many walls. She still had so much to learn. Especially about her own son.
“Hobble the horses for the night, Albert,” she told him. Keeping his hands busy also kept his mind busy, too busy to brood.
Bingham stood, picked up his rifle and stared down at her. ‘“Reproofs for discipline are the way of life, to keep you from the evil woman, from the smooth t
ongue of the adulteress. Do not desire her beauty in your heart, nor let her catch you with her eyelids. For on account of a harlot one is reduced to a loaf of bread.’ So sayeth the Lord. I’ll take the first watch.”
Beauty? Bingham had called her harlot and adulteress often enough, but surely he did not associate that word with her. Not beauty. Puzzled, she watched the preacher stride away from the circle of firelight to take up sentry in the hills above.
Mattie shifted and picked up her plate once more with the intent of cleaning the supper mess. However, mere movement of her ankle shot pain through her. Her face must have shown it, because Gordon stood up and came toward her in that easy, coordinated stride of a man who is centered in his body, who knows both its strengths and its weaknesses well.
She was unsure of his purpose and nervous as he knelt over her, but he merely lifted her skirt’s fringed hem. “None of us ever thanked you for what you did back there at the cornfield. You were brave.” He gave her a crooked grin.
He felt along her ankle. She winced. In response to her flinch, he eased his grip.
The creek bed’s stones had gouged and bruised her feet more than she had realized. She felt his eyes on her. She met his gaze and saw confusion there, as if he were trying to understand this wild creature that she was.
“Come on,” he said, gathering her up into his arms and standing. “We’re going to work on the swelling again. One more time in the cold water, and you should be ready for the famous Halpern hot foot-wrap.”
She could not equate his humor with the barbaric sport of foxing that he practiced. But then, neither could she equate his artistic nature with it. His sophistication contrasted with his impoverished background. Truly, he danced with the paradox.
Fully knowing she was making her situation all that much more difficult, she nevertheless gave into this moment of being cared for. It wasn’t the same as being cherished, but she could pretend, couldn’t she? If only for the moment.
She put her arms around his neck and rested her head against his shoulder. She could smell his own particular male scent. She liked it.
Tame the Wildest Heart Page 11
