Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  When the horse stilled, Angela raised her head and watched in horror as the other two savages unhitched the mules and set fire to the wagon. Their drunken cries of victory curdled her blood.

  In minutes they were pounding away through the rocks, mules in tow. Angela’s heart pounded in rhythm to the drumming of the hooves. Her ribs and belly slammed into the horse’s back again and again. Twigs and limbs slapped her legs and head as the beast crashed headlong into the heavy brush toward the east.

  God in heaven, she begged. Let me die quickly. Then something large and solid struck her head. A deep, welcoming blackness engulfed her. She thanked God for answering her prayer so swiftly.

  When Angela came to it was dark and she was lying on the ground. She lay there a moment and tried to figure out where she was. She tried to move, and couldn’t. She tried to swallow, and couldn’t. She tried to remember, and couldn’t.

  Then it all came flooding back. Her mother, her father, the gunman. The Apaches! Oh, God. She wasn’t dead after all. She assumed her hands and feet were still tied, but she couldn’t feel them at all. The gag in her mouth was still there, and she now understood why it was called a gag as her throat convulsed in a futile attempt to dislodge the strangling cloth.

  Her captors removed her gag and untied her long enough for her to drink and relieve herself. For the latter, they gave her no privacy. She thought she might die of embarrassment, except she was sure her fear would kill her first. She was able to take one last gulp of water before they tied her again and stuffed the gag back into her mouth.

  She hurt so bad she didn’t think she could stand it. Her head throbbed with every beat of her pulse. Her arms and shoulders screamed with pain because her hands were tied behind her back. Her legs had buckled beneath her when she first stood. Now they were tied again at the ankles. She knew her feet were still there, but only because she could see them. With every breath she took, her stomach and chest hurt from pounding against the bony, unyielding back of that sweaty, smelly horse.

  She was spared that indignity the next morning, but the savages had a new torture for her. The thin-lipped one smirked as he untied her feet then slipped a rawhide noose over her neck and forced her to run behind his horse. Angela concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, but it was a long time before the numbness left and she could feel the ground beneath her again.

  Then she wished fervently for the numbness to return, for her thin-soled slippers were not made for the terrain they crossed. Over rocks and gravel, through cactus and sage, sharp ravines and dry creek beds, she plodded. Many times she stumbled and fell. But the unrelenting pull of her leash forced her to scramble painfully to her feet time after time. It was move, or be dragged to death.

  She wanted to die; she knew that. But somehow, she could not simply lie there and let herself be cut to ribbons by the sharp rocks and cactus. So she kept moving. And moving. And moving. The Apaches didn’t stop for a nooning, like the wagon train had done. They just kept right on.

  Her skin burned beneath the savage rays of the Arizona sun. Her eyes burned from the bright glare. Her lungs burned from inhaling air that felt like it came straight from a blast furnace…or hell. But her mind did not burn—it was numb.

  Angela remembered the fear that had engulfed her when she’d first seen the three warriors, but she didn’t really feel it any more. It was still there, she was certain, but she was too tired and in too much pain to concentrate on fear. She didn’t have the strength to spend on it.

  Finally, at dusk, they stopped. Angela might have been able to walk farther, since putting one foot in front of the other was the only thing that kept her from falling flat on her face. But when they stopped, she stopped. Her eyes closed, and she was asleep before she hit the ground.

  Sometime during the night she was awakened by rough hands grabbing at her. She moaned and tried to turn away, unwilling to leave the sanctuary of sleep. But the hands wouldn’t leave her alone. Sharp voices uttered deep, guttural tones. Whiskey fumes pinched her nostrils just before something was thrown over her face. A cool breeze teased her legs.

  But if there was a cool breeze, why couldn’t she breathe? She struggled from the dark stillness of her sleep and opened her eyes to more darkness. She came to her senses when she realized it was her skirt that covered her face, and the men—no they were animals!—were laughing.

  She felt something cold and sharp running down first one thigh, then the other, then her drawers were yanked from her body, leaving her totally exposed from the waist down. With her hands still tied behind her back and her skirt over her face, Angela found the strength to be afraid. She began to kick and scream.

  The men laughed harder. Greedy, callused fingers crept up her thigh. Hands grabbed at her ankles, her waist. She kicked out blindly, connecting with something firm, like a man’s chest. But the hands kept coming, grabbing, pulling, pinching.

  A shot rang out and echoed through the darkness. It must have struck nearby, for sharp sand sprayed across Angela’s bare legs. The Apaches released her. It was dead quiet. Then the stillness was broken by the slow plodding of a tired horse approaching.

  Angry Apache voices broke out all around her. After a moment, her skirt was jerked back down over her bareness, and Angela stared at the black silhouette of a fourth Apache squatted next to her. Moonlight revealed his face. It was Chee.

  Chapter Five

  Angela leaned her head wearily against the rough bark of an oak, the only tree in this little hole in the rocks where they’d brought her. The four Apaches—her three captors and Chee—had been arguing since they made camp an hour ago. She knew she must be the subject of the disagreement. She wished desperately she understood their language.

  She’d never been so glad to see anyone in her life as she’d been last night when Chee showed up. He had untied her and made her promise not to scream or run, then gave her food and water. She’d been allowed to ride on the back of his horse today, too, instead of being forced to run and walk again. It was a good thing, for she doubted her ability to walk another step, much less run. Of course, after a day of straddling the back of a horse, she was certain she’d never be able to move again, anyway.

  She’d never been on a horse before, but she was too frightened and too exhausted to notice the new experience. She’d wrapped her arms around Chee’s waist and concentrated on hanging on. Maybe she should have tried walking instead. No one needed to worry that she might scream or run—she wasn’t capable of either.

  There’d been a few minutes last night, after Chee’s arrival, when the fear relaxed its hold on her, but the respite had been brief. Chee’s arrival did not guarantee her safety, she knew. After all, what did she really know about him? He was an Apache. Her captors were his friends.

  While the four of them argued, she succumbed to exhaustion and fell asleep, despite her fear.

  Chee felt like howling in frustration. “Fools!” he spat. “You know Cochise has forbidden all raiding for over a year now. What were you thinking to capture a white girl? What do you think he’ll do when he finds out?”

  “He won’t find out, unless you run to him and announce it,” Tahnito said heatedly through his thin lips.

  “We’re not taking her into camp. We’re not that stupid,” said Mahco.

  “We’re going to keep her here for our use. No one needs to know about her.” Caje, the youngest of the trio, looked to the other two for conformation.

  “Here? An hour away from camp? And you expect no one to find out? I was right!” Chee cried, throwing his hands up in disgust. “You are all fools! You know Cochise wants peace. That’s why there’s been no raiding. You say you found her only a few hours from Apache Pass. What do you think Los Goddammies at the white man’s fort will do about it? They’ll know who took her. Our band is the only one in the area. Nobody else raids around here. You’ll bring the bluecoats down on us and ruin Cochise’s chances for peace. He will kill you.”

  The three younger warri
ors were silent, uneasy, beginning to realize the trouble they may have created. Chee thought rapidly. There was only one way out of this mess, but as far as he could see, it was perfect. They couldn’t return Angela to her own people because her family was dead. She had nowhere to go, no one to provide for her. But suppose…

  “Listen to me, my friends. I have thought of a way out of this trouble for all of us, including the girl. You may not like the idea at first, but if you think about it, you will see it will be a good thing.”

  Tahnito narrowed his eyes, wondering what Chee was up to. “What are you suggesting?” Tahnito was the leader of the other two, and Chee was the friend of a man Tahnito hated. He was not eager to pacify Chee in the least, but he now realized it had been foolish to take the girl. The simplest thing to do would be to use her, kill her, and hide the body. Then no one would know. But Chee would never go along with that, because the girl had helped him once.

  “We give her to Bear Killer,” Chee stated.

  Tahnito clenched his fists in anger. “No!”

  “Hear me out before you say no. You know he’ll be here any day now, and you know what happens when he comes. You’ve all seen the way your sisters and the other girls look at him when he walks through camp. Don’t try to deny it. You know they all want him.”

  Mahco started to interrupt, but Tahnito motioned him to silence and nodded for Chee to continue.

  “If Bear Killer had a wife—a white wife—they’d stop following him around quick enough. None of our girls would want to be second wife to a white woman, not even for Bear Killer. And besides, Bear Killer will only take one wife—you know that. So we get the girl off our hands, and at the same time, your sisters and sweethearts will stop following Bear Killer around. Think about it.”

  Tahnito frowned. It was true what Chee said about the girls. Bear Killer’s blond hair and Anglo features attracted too much attention. The men would like to see him married, but not, Tahnito thought, to one of their own. Tahnito’s own sister, Alope, was always talking about Bear Killer this and Bear Killer that. It was enough to drive a man crazy. He and his sister had had more than one argument about that white man. Tahnito would never allow her to marry the one she wanted.

  “How will this keep Cochise from finding out how she got here?” Caje wanted to know.

  “How will he know?” Chee asked. “I’ll ride out and meet Bear Killer and get him to agree to come for her. She’ll ride into camp with him, and I think in exchange for her life, she will keep quiet. We can leave that up to Bear Killer.”

  “What makes you think Bear Killer will want her? Why should he go along with any of this?” Tahnito asked.

  “You know how he is about white captives,” Chee said with a shrug. “Remember what happened to Woman of Magic when our warriors took her? He’ll take the girl to save her from that. Besides, by white man’s standards, she’s very beautiful when she’s cleaned up.”

  Tahnito thought for a moment. The idea had merit, but he still had reservations. “Maybe we will think about it.” His two cohorts nodded their agreement. “Maybe he can have her when we’re finished with her.”

  “No!” Chee was adamant. “If he finds out about it, you know he’ll go straight to Cochise. And I will go with him.”

  The argument continued. Tahnito wanted very much to have this white girl to himself for a while, even if it meant sharing her with Caje and Mahco. He’d been a long time without a woman. Apache laws and customs forbade single men and women from fraternizing. With no raiding for the past year, therefore no captives, a man’s opportunities were limited.

  Unless there happened to be a cooperative widow in the band. If she were agreeable, it was considered all right to slip off into the bushes with her, and no one thought badly of either one of them. But with over a year of peace behind them, there were no new widows these days. No young ones, that is.

  Still, a woman, especially a white woman, was not worth his chief’s wrath. Tahnito agreed to let Chee talk to Bear Killer. Mahco and Caje reluctantly decided to go along. It was, Tahnito decided, the only thing to do, but it rankled him to be party to anything that might bring pleasure to Bear Killer.

  A hand on her shoulder brought Angela awake with a scream in her throat. She relaxed slightly when she recognized Chee.

  “I will be away for a day or two, maybe longer,” he said. “You will be safe while I’m gone.”

  Panic rushed through her veins. He was abandoning her! “Don’t leave me here with them, Chee,” she begged. “Take me with you.”

  “Angela, I can’t. Trust me, will you? You helped me once, now I’m trying to help you.”

  “Then take me with you!”

  “I can’t,” he repeated. “Until and unless they decide to take you into camp, you belong to them. But I have a plan, and they’ve agreed to it. Now I must set it in motion.”

  Hope rose in her heart. “A plan? To get me away from here?”

  “If it works, yes. But much will depend on you.”

  “Anything,” she cried. “Anything to get away from them.”

  “Will you, Angela? Will you marry a friend of mine in exchange for your life and freedom?”

  Angela quailed. The hope in her heart withered. Marry an Apache? Live with these savages for the rest of her life? Or at least until she could escape. Dear God! She looked over at her three captors, all eyeing her carefully. She knew what they had in mind. It was impossible to misinterpret that searing look in those hot black eyes. A fierce shudder ripped through her. Could she accept one of them to avoid having to submit to them all? Could she not?

  “One of them?” she asked, her lips trembling, her mouth dry.

  “No. The man I have in mind is my friend, Bear Killer. He is a good man, Angela, and he’s your only choice. Do you agree?”

  She trembled at the sound of his friend’s name. To have a name like that, a man must be vicious and savage. She swallowed heavily. “What you’re saying is…it’s this Bear Killer, or all of them. Is that it?”

  “That’s it, Angela. But don’t worry. I think you’ll like him, and I know he’ll like you.”

  In spite of Chee’s smile of reassurance, Angela felt her stomach shrivel into a tight knot of fear.

  Chapter Six

  Matt Colton pulled back on the pinto’s reins and cocked his head to listen. Behind him, the twins halted their own mounts and looked alert. There it was again, the sharp whistle of a pintail duck.

  For half a second Matt started to look to the sky in search of the bird, then stopped himself with a grimace of disgust. It was too early in the year for pintails to be this far south, and the only reason one would be here at all was to pass through on its way somewhere else. This was not duck country.

  Since it wasn’t a duck, and it wasn’t a known Apache signal, that left only one other possibility. Chee.

  It was a game they’d played with each other since boyhood—each one always trying to catch the other off guard. This time it had almost worked. If Chee had whistled five minutes ago, he’d have caught Matt daydreaming about a pair of brilliant green eyes in a small, oval face encircled by a pale golden braid. Green eyes wavering between fear and outrage when they looked at him, but gentling into compassionate softness when settling on his stepbrother and stepsister.

  Actually, “step” was a term others used. As far as Matt and the rest of the family were concerned, there was no “step” to the relationship. Pace and Serena were his brother and sister just the same as Spence and Jessica were, even though the twins were sired by someone other than Travis Colton, Matt, Spence, and Jessica’s father. Even the law acknowledged Travis as the twins’ legal father.

  Travis Colton had married Daniella, Matt’s stepmother, shortly before she gave birth to Pace and Serena. When the twins were barely a week old, Travis had adopted them, despite the fact that their sire was some unknown Apache rapist.

  The entire family and all the Triple C employees stood firmly behind Matt’s father and his decisio
n to raise his wife’s half-breed children as his own. Friends and acquaintances had swiftly learned to keep any and all criticism to themselves.

  Talk still ran rampant, Matt knew, but not within earshot of a Colton. Only a few people with loose tongues and careless attitudes toward reaching old age had slipped up, and all had lived to regret the mistake.

  But even close friends of the Coltons had never been loyal enough to actually take up for the twins against prejudiced attitudes. Most whites in the territory hated all Apaches, the Chiricahua in particular, with a vengeance. And most especially, they held the twins’ adoptive grandfather, Cochise, in total abomination and no small amount of fear.

  So who was that green-eyed beauty in blue gingham who’d been prepared to defend his own brother and sister from him the other day?

  He’d wanted to see her again, but had been forced to spend the rest of that afternoon confirming head counts and signing contracts on the Triple C mustangs the Army was buying. By the time he was free of his duties for the day, it was dark. He’d strayed over near the wagons, but hadn’t caught another sight of the girl.

  He told himself he only wanted to thank her. After all—it wasn’t every day a white girl stuck up for half-breeds.

  He hated taking the twins to the fort—for their sakes, not his. But they knew what could happen and had chosen to go anyway. That way they could get to their grandfather’s stronghold for their twice-a-year visit a week or two sooner than if they’d had to wait for Matt to return home and get them.

  What made it particularly bad this time was that they’d had to stay at the fort several days longer than just that one afternoon. They’d had to wait for the Army paymaster to show up before receiving payment for the herd. Matt had sent the money back with the ranch hands, then finally headed out with the twins. Chee had probably expected him several days ago.