Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  Angela felt trapped by his dark gaze. “They do?” she whispered.

  “Uh huh. They’ve never seen a person with green eyes before.” Then he added softly, “Neither have I.”

  Angela gripped the blanket with her right hand, then gasped as a deep, throbbing pain shot up her arm. Her throat clenched at the sight of the bandage from her wrist to her elbow. “What happened to my arm?” she cried.

  “Take it easy,” he said. “It’ll be all right in a few days.”

  “But what happened? It feels like it’s on fire.”

  “You cut yourself. Don’t you remember?”

  “No…I—”

  “It’s all right, Angela. All you have to worry about right now is resting and getting better. Just forget what I said earlier. As soon as we leave here, we’ll get that annulment, and I’ll see to it you get wherever you want to go, I promise.”

  Her mind couldn’t make any logical connection between her arm and an annulment, but of the two, the annulment was much more important. “But you were so adamant about it. What made you change your mind?”

  Matt set the broth aside and took her hand, gazing earnestly at her. “I know I was, and I’m sorry, Angela. So sorry. I had no idea it meant that much to you. I had no idea you’d rather—well, that you felt so strongly about it.”

  “What do you mean? How do you know I feel that way?”

  “How do I—? You slit your arm open from wrist to elbow and nearly bleed to death, and you ask how I know?”

  “Is that what happened to my arm?” she cried, her eyes widening in alarm.

  “You don’t have to pretend, Angela. I said I’d get you out of here, and I will, just as soon as you’re well.”

  “I appreciate that. You’re right, I do want to leave here, but not enough to do what you think I’ve done! You actually think I…that I tried…to kill myself?!”

  Matt looked at her in confusion. “What else am I supposed to think? You were embarrassed and upset. You wouldn’t talk to me. Then I find you lying in a pool of blood. The reason your head hurts is probably because when you passed out, you fell and struck it on something.”

  Angela stared at him in astonishment. She knew her mouth was hanging open, but she couldn’t seem to help it. “You really think I’d do that? For heaven’s sake! If I were going to do something that drastic, I’d have done it when Tahnito and his friends had me!”

  “You mean you didn’t—?”

  “Of course I didn’t!”

  “Then what did happen to your arm?” Matt wanted to believe her. Lord, how he wanted to believe her.

  “I don’t know. I was standing in the woods, and I heard a noise behind me. That’s when I realized I’d left the trail. The next thing I knew, something hit me on the head and I fell. Everything went black.”

  With each word she spoke, Matt’s eyes grew wider and his blood grew colder. “Are you sure, Angela? Are you very sure?”

  “I’m positive. I’ll admit I was trying to think of a way out of here, but Matt, I would never have done anything quite so drastic, I swear.”

  It was impossible for him to doubt her sincerity. “If what you’re saying is true, that means someone here in this camp struck you from behind, then slit your arm open and left you to bleed to death.” He gripped her hand tightly. “Knowing the Chiricahua the way I do, I find that almost impossible to believe. But I’d rather believe that than think you tried to…kill yourself…because of me.”

  Angela shuddered. “I don’t want to think someone tried to kill me either, but I think you’ve overlooked the obvious,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “What did I use to cut myself with? I don’t have a knife.”

  Matt swore at his own stupidity for not realizing it sooner. “You’re right. I’m sorry,” he said with a small grin. “But you still have to eat the rest of this broth.”

  While he spooned the rest of it into her mouth, he spoke, his voice grim. “Since it’s apparently not safe for you to wander around alone, you’re to stay with me at all times. I don’t even want you going to the bushes or to bathe or anywhere, unless I make sure it’s safe first. I don’t want you out of my sight for even a moment. Do you understand?”

  Angela nodded. It was finally sinking in that someone actually tried to kill her and make it look like suicide, and she was scared. She didn’t need to be told twice to stay close to Matt.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When Angela was up and dressed the next day, the throbbing pain in her arm was nearly unbearable until Matt fashioned a sling for her. When they stepped out of the wickiup Serena came running up to them.

  “Matt!” she called. “Grandfather’s back! What happened to your arm, Angela?”

  Angela looked at Matt. What was she supposed to say?

  Matt answered for her. “She took a fall in the woods yesterday and cut it.”

  “I hope it’s not bad. I’ve gotta go!” Serena dashed off in a breathless hurry.

  “And who is your grandfather?” Angela asked.

  “He’s not my grandfather, he’s the twins’ grandfather. Cochise.”

  Angela’s eyes widened. “Cochise? I don’t understand. I thought his two sons were around your age. I didn’t know he had any other children old enough to have children the twins’ age.”

  “He has an adopted daughter,” Matt explained as they walked through camp. “She’s Pace’s and Serena’s mother.”

  “Your father married an Apache?”

  “And if he did?” Matt asked tightly.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it, Matt, I was just asking.”

  “Look. If we’re going to get along at all until we get you out of here, you’re going to have to forget everything you ever heard about Apaches and pretend to like them. You met three bad ones, but there are bad white men, too. These people have accepted you, or at least most of them have,” he added, looking down at her arm. “What happened yesterday could have happened to you just as easily in Memphis as here. So just keep your prejudices to yourself.”

  “I’m not a child, Mr. Colton,” she gritted out between smiling lips while nodding to a passing woman. “I’m supposed to be your wife, so stop acting like my father. Even he never treated me like an idiot.

  “I’ve been kidnapped, forced to walk—sometimes run—miles and miles across the desert, nearly raped, forced to marry a stranger with more than one chip on his shoulder, drugged, hit over the head, and stabbed. You’ll pardon me if I don’t feel exactly welcome.”

  Matt stared straight ahead, jaws clenched. “And for those things, you hate all Apaches.”

  “I never said that!” Two could play his game. She refused to look at him. “I hate the three who kidnapped me, and I’d like to murder Chee for what he did. I’d hate whoever attacked me yesterday, if I knew who it was.”

  “And me? Do you hate me, too?” he asked quietly, a hint of tenseness in his voice.

  “No.” Angela kept her eyes straight ahead. “But sometimes you make me very angry.”

  Matt let out the breath he’d been holding. The tightness around his mouth and in his chest relaxed. He didn’t want her to hate him.

  She was really something, this wife of his. In the space of a few days she’d lost everything she’d ever known, including her parents, and had been thrust into a world more foreign than any she could ever have imagined, and found herself married to a stranger. In the course of all this she’d been captured, scared half out of her wits, drugged, used so harshly on her wedding night she could barely move the next day, and nearly killed. Yet she walked beside him, her head held high, and argued with him, expressing her anger.

  Most women in her position would have been reduced to a quivering mass of hysteria by now. But not his Angel. Such courage was rare in a woman. And whether she knew it or not, she was his woman. No matter what he’d said before, he had no intention of letting her go.

  They walked on in silence for several moments before Matt spoke again.
“Dani’s not an Apache.”

  Angela let out her breath, unaware she’d been holding it. “Who’s Dani?”

  “My stepmother, Daniella. We call her Dani.”

  She looked at him them. “Now I’m really confused. If she’s not an Apache, and your father’s not an Apache, how did the twins get to be half Apache?”

  A boisterous group of young boys and yapping dogs cut across their path, forcing them to stop for a moment. When the path was clear Matt seemed more relaxed, even though his voice remained grim. “Remember when I told you I’d only known of one woman who’d lived through what those three had planned for you?”

  Angela shuddered at the thought. “Your stepmother was captured?”

  “She wasn’t my stepmother then, but yes, she was captured.”

  “What happened? How did she get away?”

  “She didn’t. At least not the way you mean. There was no one to save her. She was beaten, tortured, raped, and left for dead.”

  Angela’s eyes widened and she felt faint. It could have been her. Would have been her, except for Chee and Matt. It was too horrible to contemplate. She forced the thought away and took a deep breath. “She obviously didn’t die, so what happened?”

  “No one really knows for sure.” Matt kept his eyes trained on the ground as they continued through the compound. “After they…finished with her, they left her at the base of an old pine. Sometime during the night lightning struck the tree and split it in two. The next time anyone looked at Dani, she had a white streak in her hair, at her left temple, which hadn’t been there before. Dee-O-Det said it was a mark of favor from Yúúsń.”

  “Who?”

  “God,” Matt explained. “Dee-O-Det said the streak was put there by the hand of God to show the world that Dani was favored by Him.”

  Angela didn’t know what to think. What was one supposed to think about a story like that? “What happened then?”

  “They gave her a new name, took care of her, and Cochise adopted her.”

  “What did they call her? Did she ever get to go home? How did your father meet her?”

  “Just full of questions, aren’t you?” Matt said, darting her a look from the corner of his eye. “They called her Woman of Magic. When she got home to her real family there was some trouble, so she moved away to a ranch right next to ours.”

  “And that’s where she met your father?”

  “Sort of.” Matt hesitated, then finally turned to face her. “Look Angela, I’m telling you about Dani because there’s every possibility she and my father will be here any day now, and I want you to understand.”

  “Understand what? You didn’t tell me before that they were coming.”

  Matt hesitated again. It felt strange telling someone about Dani. He’d never done it before. But he wanted Angela to know, even though he wasn’t sure why. “Let me show you something.”

  He took her by the hand and led her to the east edge of camp and showed her the remains of the pine, where Dani had lain that night over ten years ago. It had decayed a great deal since then, but the blackened, jagged stump was still there.

  An eerie feeling swept over Angela. She shivered in the hot afternoon sun.

  “Dani was left with three things that night that have remained with her, will always be a part of her. That’s the night she conceived with the twins, she got the white streak in her hair, and she started having visions.”

  “Visions? You mean…like second sight or something?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, right after that, Dad and I were on the stagecoach, coming home from New Orleans, when the Apaches hit us. I was captured. That was Dani’s first vision. She saw it while it was happening.”

  Angela shuddered. Good Lord! Has everyone in this Godforsaken country been captured? What had her father been thinking of to bring her and her mother to such a place?

  “Then,” Matt continued, “she kept seeing me with the Apaches, and kept seeing Dad looking for me, so she set out to find him. She found him, brought him to Cochise, and arranged for my release. That’s how we met her. She and Dad were married not too long after that.”

  “May I ask another question?”

  “You don’t have to. I can guess what it is, so I’ll tell you. Yes, Dad knew she was expecting before he married her, and he knew how it happened.”

  Angela was quiet for a moment, digesting all he’d told her. “Your father must be a very special man to marry a woman under those circumstances. I would imagine most men wouldn’t want a woman who’d been through something like that.”

  “You’re right, I guess. Dad is special. But so is Dani. And unless I miss my guess, you’ll be finding that out for yourself any day now.”

  “You’re sure they’re coming? What will we tell them?”

  “I’m not sure they’re coming, but Dani still ‘sees’ things. She may have ‘seen’ you. I just don’t know. But I’ve learned not to be surprised when she shows up unexpectedly. As far as what to tell them, they may already know the truth. Neither one of them is very easy to fool. And speaking of someone not easily fooled, I think it’s time I introduced you to Cochise. He’ll be offended if I don’t. But no matter what he says, or guesses at, we can’t admit the truth to him.”

  “I understand,” she said with a nod. “But I have another question.”

  “What?”

  “How do Huera and Hal-Say fit into all of this?”

  “They adopted me after I was captured, before Dani and Dad came to get me.”

  “And your real mother?”

  “She died right after I was born.”

  Angela was silent then, and Matt took her to meet Cochise. He greeted the chief in the Chiricahua language, and the two men talked for several minutes. Angela didn’t understand a word, of course, but she knew by their gestures they were talking about her.

  She carefully studied the man who was said to be the scourge of the Southwest. He was a couple of inches taller than Matt’s six feet, which made him the tallest man she’d seen since coming here. The other Apache men were several inches shorter. He had broad shoulders and a thick, muscular chest. In fact, his entire body was covered with hard muscles beneath bronze skin. And she could see nearly every muscle, because he was dressed like the other men in camp—all he wore was a loincloth and tall moccasins. His black hair was long and thick, streaked with gray.

  When his gaze met hers, Angela sucked in her breath sharply. His eyes were deep, dark brown—almost black—fringed by thick, black lashes. But what held her attention was the intelligence, the power, and the hint of sadness in his gaze. It was a commanding, compelling gaze. The look of a great leader. She’d seen eyes like that once before in her life, years ago.

  “Beauregard,” she whispered.

  “Angela?”

  Matt had been talking to her, but she hadn’t heard him. “I’m sorry,” she said with a start. “What did you say?” She felt a blush stain her cheeks.

  Matt frowned at her in disapproval. “I’d like you to meet Cochise, chief of the Chidikáágu’.

  Angela ignored Matt’s frown. She turned back to Cochise in awe with a slight smile curving her lips. “Please tell him I am honored to meet such a great leader of men.”

  Matt looked at her strangely for a moment, then translated her greeting to Cochise, who acknowledged with a smile.

  A few minutes later they left Cochise and headed back to their wickiup.

  Cochise watched them go, the smile fading from his lips. His heart was saddened for what the young white girl was going through and for the lies Bear Killer was forced to tell, yet warmed by what the two were willing to do to keep the tenuous peace he himself had finally established.

  Did Tahnito and his friends, in the supreme arrogance of their youth, think their chief so old and feeble-minded he would not know of their treachery? The same chief who had led all the Apache nations in war since the death of his friend Mon-ache, who whites and Mexicans had called Mangas Coloradas—R
ed Sleeves? Did they think a man who for years had known the movement of every white man within hundreds of miles would not know of their actions?

  The young pups must think him a fool. But he would allow them their deception. This time. For the sake of peace.

  “What was the matter with you?” Matt hissed as soon as they were away from Cochise. “And who the hell is Beauregard?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare like that, it’s just that he reminded me of a man I met during the war, when I was a child.”

  “Beauregard?”

  “General Pierre Gustave Toutant de Beauregard. He was a Confederate general.”

  “Cochise reminds you of a Confederate general? I think you’ve been in the sun too long.”

  Angela laughed. “No. He really does. General Beauregard came through Memphis looking for supplies and recruits on his way to Shiloh. I don’t know, it’s just that they have the same look in their eyes, Beauregard and Cochise. A look of pride and determination. A look that makes men want to follow them. But at the same time, there’s a look of weariness, even sadness, like they both know something the rest of us don’t want to know. They’ve both done things they didn’t want to do, fought battles they didn’t want to fight, because they had no choice. They did what they felt they had to do. Beauregard directed the bombardment of Fort Sumter,” she added softly.

  Matt was stunned at the depth of her insight. He began to see her in a new light. His admiration for her, as well as his determination to keep her as his wife, grew. “I don’t know about Beauregard, but you certainly seem to understand Cochise. You could tell all that from just meeting him?”

  Angela shrugged. “It was in his eyes.”

  Matt paused outside their wickiup and spoke. “Maybe Beauregard knew he was fighting a losing battle. Maybe he saw the defeat and destruction of what he considered to be his country.”

  “And Cochise? Does he see those things too?”

  “He sees them. That’s why he’s allowed no raiding for over a year now. He wants peace very badly for the Chúk’ánéné. He’s come to realize that if something isn’t done soon, it’ll be too late. No Apache is afraid to die, but they also don’t want to see the Apache wiped off the face of the earth, either. Peace with the government is their only chance.”