by Diana Palmer
His dark eyes twinkled. “Chili pepper,” he murmured.
“Red-hot chili pepper,” she agreed. “Watch out I don’t burn you, red man.”
So much for subterfuge. He wouldn’t mind giving himself away to this spicy Easterner. “You’re an interesting proposition, Miss Bates,” he replied in perfect English. “But we can discuss your appalling metaphors later. I don’t like the look of that cloud. Climb up, before we both drown here.”
Both eyebrows arched as she realized that her hunch about him was right. She laughed and pursed her lips. “It’s the sun,” she said. “I’ve been out here too long. You make big joke, huh?”
“I speak English rather well, as it happens, and drowning is nothing to joke about,” he replied easily, moving the horse closer. He reached down a big, lean hand. “Come on. We haven’t much time. Distance is deceptive out here, and floods can be upon you before you realize it. Two of Vance’s acquaintances drowned in the summer flood, and they knew the land.”
“You really do speak English quite well,” she said shyly.
“I speak English, Spanish, and Latin. Even some Greek. But English is adequate for the time being.”
The sound of rain prompted her to action. She reached up and found herself jerked into the saddle in front of him. His strength fascinated her. She was used to rather academic men, not men of action. He controlled the nervous pinto expertly with only the pressure of his knees while he settled her against him and turned the horse back toward the Lang ranch. He smelled of wind and piñon pine and desert. He wasn’t at all dirty, although a bit of the yellow dust feathered his clothing. It feathered her own as well.
“Why?” she asked, staring at the handsome bronze face that was much too close for comfort.
“Why the deception?” He smiled with faint arrogance. “I enjoy living down to the opinion most of you whites have of the poor ignorant savage.”
She flushed. “Ouch.”
“I suppose it never occurs to any of you that there were great civilizations in this country when your European ancestors were knocking one another over the head with sticks.”
“The Hohokam were very civilized,” she had to agree. “Their society was structured around peaceful cohabitation and sharing, and their purification rites for killing an enemy lasted so long that they were hardly ever able to go to war,” she added.
“You’re educated,” he said, smiling with pleased surprise. He glanced down at her as the horse eased its way over the rutted dirt road. “Yes. The Hohokam lived here perhaps thousands of years ago. They irrigated the land and cultivated it, planted crops, built cities. They were intelligent and peaceful.”
“Not your ancestors…?”
He burst out laughing.
“No,” she exclaimed, thinking she’d insulted him, “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant they weren’t the fore-bears of the Apache, were they?”
“No one knows. Archaeologists believe they may be the ancestors of the Pima and Papago,” he said. “Do you even know what the word Apache means?”
“No.”
“It’s a Zuñi word. It means enemy.”
“What do the Apache call themselves?”
“The People.”
“I knew a Cherokee girl just briefly back home,” Sissy said excitedly. “She said the Cherokee word for themselves means Principal People.”
“Sioux also means people. Most Indians call themselves that. How did you manage to learn so much about us through all that fear?”
“It wasn’t fear. I was living down to your image of white women,” she teased. “Apaches carry off women captives….”
He looked down at her and pursed his lips. “So we do,” he said, amused. His eyes fell to her bodice. “And just imagine what we do to them. My, my.”
She colored a little and glared at him. “Mr. Naki—”
“I’m called Two Fists in my own language,” he said, correcting her. “Doesn’t that sound properly Indian, as names go?”
“If you could stop looking at me like that…”
His dark eyes looked directly into hers. “You do blush beautifully,” he remarked. “I don’t rape white women, Miss Bates. In fact, I prefer darker skin and more of it. We won’t mention that what you’re thinking is impossible on horseback.”
She went scarlet then. “I wasn’t thinking a single thing!”
“I suppose I should apologize for making an indecent remark like that, but you know how we savages are.”
“Of all the audacious, outrageous—”
“They even call us that in books,” he added, ignoring her adjectives. “Noble savages. As if we don’t have brains at all.”
She laughed finally. He was outrageous, all right. “How did you learn all those languages you said you speak?” she asked, diverted.
“The priests hid me when the U.S. Government moved Geronimo’s whole Apache tribe out to Florida after Geronimo surrendered. Eventually they got as far back as Fort Sill, Oklahoma, but I was keen to stay in my mountains here. The priests discovered that I could be taught. So they taught me.”
“Your parents?”
“My mother died when I was born. My father was killed trying to escape the cavalry when they rounded us up,” he said bitterly.
“I’m sorry….”
“Your people always are, aren’t they?” he asked as the past came searing through him. He looked at her without seeing her. “They took everything we had and killed and enslaved us in the process. They virtually destroyed the Chiricahua Apache. I have more in common with the Mexican peasants than I have with the whites, Miss Bates. I know what it is to be an oppressed race without the means to rebel.”
“Your people did fight,” she argued, “just as the Mexicans are fighting now.”
“Perhaps the Mexicans will win. There are enough of them—and God knows, their cause is a just one,” he said, with fervor. “But my people were few and scattered. And do you know what separates us from the whites, Miss Bates? Do you know the difference between your people and mine? It’s greed. The white man wants to own or control everything around him. The Apache wants only to live at peace with the world and his people. Greed is as alien to most of us as honor is to most whites.”
She was shocked. It had been a morning for revelations, but this was an especially unexpected one. He was more learned than she, and probably more intelligent. How terrible to have such a mind and be treated like a monkey.
“It must be very painful to have people misjudge you so badly,” she said after a minute.
He searched her quiet, soft eyes. “Thorn said that I frightened you. He didn’t want me to come and fetch you.”
“I’m not afraid of you at all,” she said ruefully. “You aren’t the only one who can act. I don’t suppose you might be willing to teach me about your culture?” she asked.
He chuckled dryly as they approached the Lang ranch. “I might be persuaded.”
“Why are you called Two Fists?” she wondered out loud.
He reined in the pony and shifted her, his eyes level and steady on hers. “When the cavalry came for us, I went for one of the soldiers with both fists.”
“Oh.”
“I was five years old,” he murmured, smiling. “The priests begged me away from the officer I attacked, and he let me go with them. I’ve never forgotten. He was a doctor. He’s stationed at Fort Huachuca and he visits me from time to time.”
“He must be a kind man.”
“In his case, it was a great kindness. Apaches had killed his wife and young son the month before.”
“He must be a very special man.”
“Yes. There’s been enough killing on both sides to make for uneasy acquaintanceship between my people and yours.”
“I suppose so.” She moved her hand and it encountered his long, thick black hair. She started to remove her fingers, but then she impulsively touched the sleek thickness of the long black strands. “I’ve never seen a man with long hair before.”
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The touch of her fingers in his hair was starkly disturbing. He caught them and pushed them away, his eyes suddenly cold and unapproachable.
“Excuse—excuse me,” she stammered, averting her eyes.
He felt guilty for his brutal rejection, but he had no place in his life for her. White and red never mixed. They could become each other’s worst liability.
“Hopeless situations are best avoided,” he said icily.
When she realized what he was admitting, her heart raced like a wild thing. Slowly, so slowly, she lifted her eyes to his and found something in them that she’d been searching for all her life.
“No,” she whispered in protest as the sensation of being snared formed in her body.
“No,” he agreed. But the hand at her back moved up into the thick bun that held it at her nape. He arched her upward so that her body touched his, so that her face was close enough to let his eyes fill the world. She trembled with a surge of sudden, shocking pleasure.
His fingers contracted and something purely male and conquering filled his face and eyes as he read her submission and reacted to it.
“Confine your relic hunts to the land around the house as long as you stay here,” he said huskily. “Because this,” he emphasized, his hand reinforcing his mastery, “is a high wind with no shelter. Do you understand?”
“I think so.” She shivered with something approaching pleasure. It was a sensation she’d never experienced.
He nodded and his hand slowly released its grasp. His eyes searched hers. “I had a woman,” he said huskily. “She was young and Mexican and very, very pretty. We lived just over the border in Mexico. Her brother was a dissident who hated the government and was friends with a man named Blanco, who is becoming well known today as a revolutionary. One day an officer in the Mexican government came by our house with his company and Conchita’s brother, Luis, was there. They had been hunting him. They shot Luis and accused us of being revolutionaries.” His eyes darkened with pain. “The officer grabbed Conchita and I went for him. Two of his men helped knock me out. I won’t tell you what was done to Conchita. Fortunately, somewhere in the middle of it, she died.” His face hardened. “I want no more of what I felt for her. I work for Thorn Vance and I live alone. I will live alone for the rest of my life.”
Tears stung her eyes hotly and overflowed, fogging her lenses. She wept for him and the woman he’d loved. She wept for herself for having the misfortune to feel something so suddenly for a man who didn’t want anyone’s affection. She wept for the world.
“I abhor tears,” he said through his teeth.
She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes with the back of her dust-sprinkled hand. “Oh, so do I,” she whispered brokenly. “So please don’t ever cry in front of me. I’ll just go to pieces if you do.”
He found himself smiling a minute later. Smiling, when the pain had been at its worst just seconds before. With a rough sound, he traced the tears down her cheeks and looked into her wet eyes with a kind of inner knowledge of her that shocked him. She didn’t usually cry. He knew that, somehow; knew that she didn’t show weakness or pain or grief in front of others.
“You said it was a pretense, your fear of me when we first met,” he said suddenly. “Why?”
She grimaced. “Men don’t notice me. I’m plain and thin and educated…I wanted you to notice me,” she choked, dropping her eyes.
And he had. Looked and remembered and longed for her. He looked out over the horizon to the house where people were now standing on the front porch. He and Sissy were out of the way among the rocks, just out of sight. But soon they’d be missed and looked for. He had to take her down there.
“I’m sorry,” she said, replacing her glasses. “I shouldn’t have pretended.”
“I was doing the same thing,” he replied solemnly. “I enjoy the reaction I get from whites when they discover that I’m not totally stupid.”
“Women are stupid, too, didn’t you know? We’re made for scrubbing floors and having children. God gave us minds, but we keep them in the pantry so they won’t rot,” she said dryly.
He burst out laughing. She made his heart lift. “I see that you have had your portion of bad treatment.”
“That is an understatement, sir. I mentioned going to a university and half the people in my family fainted. Nice girls do not get educated; they get married.” She pushed back a strand of hair that had come loose from her neat bun as he urged the horse forward. “I want to know about the ancient peoples who lived here. I want to know what they did, what their culture was like. Aren’t you curious?”
“Yes,” he replied. “I wish I knew more.”
“You could go to school, too.”
“An Indian at a university?” He looked properly horrified.
“Well, I suppose several people in your family would faint, too.”
“I have no family left,” he said matter-of-factly.
“I’m sorry. Family is nice, even if it does get on your nerves from time to time.”
“So I’m told. I must get you home,” he said, glancing up at the sky. “Rain is very dangerous here.”
“You told me that.”
He chuckled. “So I did.” He shifted her more comfortably as the horse ambled along the road. “Have you a Christian name?”
She nodded. “Alexandra. My family calls me Sissy. When Ben, my brother, was young, it was the closest he could come to my given name.”
“Alexandra.” He smiled faintly. “It suits you.”
“Did you have a Christian name?”
“The priests called me Hierro. It means ‘iron’ in Spanish. They said I had a head like it.”
“I can believe that.”
“A woman’s place is to agree,” he chided.
“All Indians are savages,” she joked.
He smiled. So did she. The horse began the slow decline down from the rocky ridge toward the house. The rain was starting to fall already.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE you actually allowed him to bring you home in that fashion,” Richard told Sissy with icy hauteur. “An Indian, putting hands on my sister!”
“Would you rather he’d left me out in the desert to be washed away in a flood?” Sissy raged at him. She’d been astonished at the attack over the supper table. Mary and Trilby had been on the porch when Naki brought her home. They hadn’t said anything, although Mary had looked numb. The men had been out with the cattle, and were only told about Naki’s intervention when they came home at suppertime. The fur had begun to fly at once.
“The lack of convention—” he began furiously.
“I have to agree,” Jack Lang intervened, his face stiff. “I’ll speak to Thorn about his man.”
“Why don’t you speak to him about it?” Sissy demanded. “He isn’t an ignorant savage.”
Richard scoffed. “He doesn’t even understand English.”
“He speaks three languages,” Sissy said shortly. “English is one of them. He’s much better educated than you are, brother, dear, and he’s much less of a snob.”
She walked off, ending the argument. Behind her, she heard Jack Lang and her brother still deploring Naki’s actions. Julie’s trill voice joined in, deploring Sissy’s outlandish behavior. Naturally, she thought, Julie would love taking Richard’s part against her!
IF SISSY HAD hoped a good night’s sleep would stop any further discussion of her adventure, she was doomed to disappointment. Richard and Jack were fuming about the incident all through breakfast, and Sissy was alternately berated and talked about.
“Men!” she said, exasperated, as a fascinated Trilby joined her in the living room after they’d put away the dishes.
“Did you say yesterday that Naki speaks several languages?” Trilby asked curiously.
“Yes. He was educated by the priests. He’s very interesting,” the other girl said hesitantly, and blushed.
Trilby didn’t know what to say. She knew that Sissy’s brother Richard was shocked at h
er behavior. So was Trilby’s family, and she, herself. Sissy was her best friend, but part of her knew that Richard was right about the hopelessness of any relationship between a white woman and a man of another race. “Sissy, he’s an Indian,” she said. “Despite his education, he’s a man of another race.”
“Not you, too,” Sissy said sadly. She sat down on the worn sofa wearily. “Ben is the only member of my family who didn’t find my attitude shocking. He’s young, of course. It seems I shall have to fight the whole world and my best friend in order to be Naki’s friend.”
“No, of course you shan’t,” Trilby said at once, loyalty breaking through her disapproval. “I’m sorry.”
“He said you were kissing Richard,” Sissy murmured dryly.
Trilby hesitated. She nodded. “Yes, I suppose I was. But it wasn’t what I expected,” she said involuntarily.
“You’re in love with him. Surely it should have been everything you wanted it to be.”
“It wasn’t.” Trilby sat down beside her and folded her hands in her lap. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I, unless those pointed references Julie’s been making to your tough neighbor really do make sense. Thorn Vance is very attractive, Trilby. And he doesn’t look at you in the way most men look at neighbors.”
Trilby flushed. “Well, we got off to a bad start. He thought I was something I wasn’t, and he treated me in an ungentlemanly fashion.”
“Oh?”
Trilby glanced up and down. “He’s…very experienced. I saw a side of him that I shouldn’t have seen at all. Now he’s sorry about it, but I don’t trust him anymore.” She grimaced. “Sissy, I’ve loved Richard for years. But when he kissed me, I—I felt nothing!”
Sissy caught her hand and pressed it. “And when the very handsome Mr. Vance kissed you, you did?”
“Yes.” She put her face in her hands. “I’m so ashamed. To feel…like that…about a ruffian!”
“How do you think I feel? I’m attracted to a savage red man.”
Trilby made a face. “And I was no help at all. I’m…” She hesitated and stared at Sissy. “But I thought you were terrified of him!”
