Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  “An accident. We’ll need more light.”

  “Some accident,” Matt said. “I’ll go round up some lanterns.”

  Their voices brought LaRisa unwillingly back to reality. Her father would not open his eyes. Would not reach out to her. Not ever again. The squeezing pain in her chest threatened to send her to her knees. Shitaa!

  Matt slipped past her and out the door. Slowly LaRisa reached for the bucket of water and a rag and approached the pallet where her father lay. She had done this many times before, bathed and prepared a body for its last journey. The others had been children at school. Some she had known; most had been strangers from other tribes.

  This was different. This was her father. With the damp rag gripped tight, she hesitated, hating to start, knowing that would mean this was all real.

  A warm hand settled on her shoulder. “Here. Let me do it,” Spence said.

  “I can do it.” She’d meant her voice to sound sharp. She feared it had come out weak and trembly.

  “I know you can,” Spence said quietly. “But you don’t have to.”

  “Yes.” She turned and looked at him. His cheek was swollen and looked angry and painful. “Yes, I do.”

  She turned back and reached toward her father, dreading the feel of cold, dead flesh. His skin was cool to the touch, but not stiff. He hadn’t been…it hadn’t been long enough yet. She hurried then, wanting to be finished before the stiffness set in.

  Matt returned with two lanterns, brightening the room and making LaRisa’s task easier. With loving hands she bathed her father, cleansing the sickness from his skin. Matt found a clean calico shirt, and he and Spence helped her put it on her father’s body. That, plus his breechcloth and moccasins, would be all he wore. She reached for the moccasins and frowned at the mold that covered them.

  “It’s this place,” Spence offered. “Anything that sits still for more than a day turns moldy.”

  She scrubbed at the ugly growth until she’d removed most traces. When she’d finished tugging the kébans onto her father’s feet and up his legs, Rosa came to the door.

  Surprise brought LaRisa to her feet. Surprise, and a touch of defensiveness. She still stung from Rosa’s earlier slight.

  Rosa held out a small clay pot. “I thought you might need this,” she said in Apache. “It’s red stain, from the berries of the sumac.”

  LaRisa wasn’t sure she wanted to accept a gift from one who had publicly snubbed her, but without the stain, she had no way to paint her father’s face red for his burial. Swallowing her pride, she took the pot and in deliberate English, said, “Thank you, Rosa.”

  Rosa’s eyes darted to Spence and Matt, then back to LaRisa before lowering to somewhere below LaRisa’s knees. In Apache, she said, “I am called Quiet Woman now. Carlisle students are not readily accepted here. Especially those without family.”

  “‘Iyáab?” Why?

  In slow, careful words, as if she feared LaRisa had forgotten the Apache language, Quiet Woman explained. “The students…we don’t think like the others. We have learned white ways, we speak white words. The others don’t understand, and they don’t like what they don’t understand.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “You helped me at school. I was never as smart as you. They might not ever have let me leave if it hadn’t been for your tutoring. And I will repay that debt by not speaking to you, not looking at you.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I have gone back to the old ways. To make sure I don’t forget, my husband has forbidden me to have anything to do with anyone from Carlisle.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of,” LaRisa cried in English.

  The one called Quiet Woman almost smiled. “You were always the strongest of us all. Before I repay your kindness by turning my back on you, I will tell you what you must do to be accepted here as one of us again.”

  Warily, LaRisa waited.

  “You must forget everything you learned at Carlisle. You must never speak English unless asked to interpret for someone, and even then, you must appear reluctant to speak it. You must never look a man in the eye. You must appear meek and mild and quiet and respectful of everyone, always deferring to those who never went to Carlisle.”

  “You can’t mean this,” LaRisa said, astounded. “The things we learned at school can help our people. I’ve learned nursing skills. I can help care for the sick, I can—”

  “If your skills are from the white man, they will not be welcome. It makes our people feel…inferior, that their own children know more than they do. They will take the help from a white man if they must, but they won’t accept white man’s help from one of us. I must go now. I’ve been gone too long.”

  “Rosa—Quiet Woman…”

  But the girl was gone in a silent rush. “Did she speak the truth?” LaRisa asked as she stared at the empty doorway.

  “The truth as she knows it,” Matt said quietly. “For most, coming back and fitting in is hard. A few manage it, though.”

  LaRisa could not be bothered any longer with such nonsense; she had a more important task at hand. She returned to her father’s side and smoothed the red stain over his face. When she finished, she sat back and gazed at him, realizing again how wasted his once-strong body was. “He was sick for a long time, wasn’t he?” She looked to Spence for her answer.

  With his face set in grim lines and his gaze locked on her father, he said, “Yes.”

  “How long?”

  “Years,” Spence said reluctantly. “Since Florida.”

  The ache in her chest drew tighter. “Why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t somebody tell me?”

  Matt shook his head. “He didn’t want you to know, honey. There was nothing you could have done.”

  “I could have been with him,” she cried. “We could have had more time together. Maybe I could have helped—”

  “Stop it,” Spence said harshly, his eyes fierce. “He didn’t want you to see his illness. He had recurring malaria. Each time it hit him he got a little weaker, the disease a little stronger. Living under conditions like these,” he said with a wave of his arm, “it was only a matter of time. He knew it, and he was adamant that you not see him as an invalid.”

  “But I could have taken care of him. I wouldn’t have cared if he was an invalid!” she protested.

  Spence’s look grew even more fierce. “No man wants to be seen as helpless, a burden to those around him. Your presence would have stripped him of his pride, his dignity.”

  LaRisa swallowed the angry response that came to mind. This was not the time nor the place for anger. But oh, how she wished her father had understood that with love and trust, pride and dignity need not be sacrificed.

  What might have been, had she and her father been together, was too painful to dwell on. LaRisa’s mind went gratefully blank as she sat beside the moldy pallet and waited out the night.

  Chapter Six

  The morning sun glared through the heavy humid air that hung over the separate graveyard set aside for the Apache prisoners. Surrounded by swamp as the area was, dry ground was hard to come by. This little spot topped a low rise just beyond the compound.

  Few who were gathered around the plain pine casket understood the low words of the Army chaplain. LaRisa recognized Naiche, who was their chief. Old Nana, Geronimo, and a few others had also come. Rosa was not there, but then, only those close to the family were expected.

  Standing dry-eyed between Spence and Matt, LaRisa wondered why the Army insisted on a Christian burial for a man who to them held heathen beliefs. The chaplain’s words weren’t without meaning, but they had little to do with the man being buried, a man the good chaplain had never taken the time to know.

  “…is with Jesus now in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

  No, LaRisa thought. Judging by the sweet smile on her father’s lips when he died, it wasn’t Jesus he’d gone to, but her mother. The idea was comforting, so LaRisa
clung to it as the chaplain finished his final prayer and the pine box was lowered into the ground. She kept clinging to the thought of her parents finally being together again as Matt and Spence stood beside her and watched two privates fill in the grave.

  A man she didn’t remember, an Apache several years older than herself, stopped before her. “This is what we have become,” he said bitterly in Apache with a nod toward the grave. “Not even a horse or a dog to send with him.”

  LaRisa met his direct gaze. “I don’t think he’ll mind. He’s with my mother now.”

  He seemed surprised by her words. “The school has ruined you as it has others. It has made you more bold than is wise. Or perhaps this mother you speak of never told you that when your father dies, you are supposed to blacken your face.”

  LaRisa resisted the urge to touch her clean cheek. Had she been permitted to cut her hair, she would have remembered to rub ashes on her face. After the accident with Spence, then tending her father all night, she had not thought of it. But she refused to accept criticism from a man she did not know. “You mean to take my mother’s place?”

  The man stiffened in fury. “You insult me!”

  At her side, Spence stepped forward. She put her hand on his arm in hopes of keeping him silent. She didn’t need a white man to defend her.

  “No more than you insult me,” she told the Apache before her.

  “I will—”

  “You will say no more,” LaRisa said, cutting him off. “My father’s graveside will not be dishonored this way.”

  The man’s black eyes narrowed to angry slits. “You are rude and disrespectful. You don’t even mourn your father by cutting off your hair.”

  LaRisa stiffened. “If you do not go away, I will cut off yours.”

  “When you start casting around for a husband, I will remember this.” He shoved past her and stomped down the hill.

  It was in her mind to shout after him that she wouldn’t be casting around for a husband, and most certainly not one like him, for she was already married. She said nothing, however, because there was no point. The marriage was temporary, and she might very well soon find herself alone. But even then, she would not seek a husband, and a gun to her head couldn’t make her choose a man like the one who had just insulted her.

  “Forgive him, child,” Geronimo said tiredly. “This imprisonment wears on him. He is bitter.”

  “We are all bitter,” she answered.

  The old warrior, once the most feared man in the nation, looked at her with the bitterness of which they both spoke. “Yes. We are all bitter. Had I not trusted Star Chief Miles and surrendered…”

  “For my father,” LaRisa told him, “it would have made no difference. We were sent to Florida before you surrendered.”

  “You are generous.”

  Perhaps she was, she thought wryly, for she deliberately refrained from telling him that although his surrender had no bearing on the tribe’s imprisonment, his fighting had. Had this one man not continually led warriors off the reservation and onto the warpath, if he had not fought so long, so hard, and so effectively that the combined armies of the United States and Mexico could not defeat him and his handful of followers, the Government would not have imprisoned all the Chiricahua people.

  Yet she could not criticize Geronimo. Her father’s teachings were strong in her, and the hot blood of freedom-loving Apaches flowed in her veins. Perhaps if they had all fought, instead of just a few…

  Thinking on it was useless. The once-proud Chidikáágu’, among the fiercest fighters of the world, were now a bitter, imprisoned people. The Army could not capture or defeat them with guns, but the Government managed it with deceit and lies.

  “Do not dwell on it, child,” Geronimo told her. “It is done and cannot be undone. At least your father is now in a better place.”

  Her lower lip trembled and her vision blurred. “Yes. A much better place.”

  Others spoke a few words to LaRisa, but most simply left quietly. When no one remained but LaRisa, Matt, Spence, and the two privates filling in the grave, Spence touched her elbow. “Come on,” he said gently. “Let’s get out of the sun.”

  Only then did she realize that sweat was rolling down her chest and back, stinging the last of the cuts Spence had treated that weren’t quite healed. Though it wasn’t yet noon, the sun burned her face and hands and the back of her neck.

  When they turned to go, she felt Matt stiffen beside her. She looked up to find him staring at a tall stranger with dark skin, shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair, and piercing blue eyes. Eyes the same shade as…

  “Pace,” Spence said, surprised. “Where did you come from?”

  “Here and there.” He kept those blue, blue eyes on Spence.

  She remembered him, LaRisa thought now. Pace Colton—Fire Seeker—the half-breed son of Daniella, Woman of Magic. Spence’s half brother; Matt’s adopted brother.

  LaRisa hadn’t seen him in years, not since she and her father had lived on the San Carlos reservation before Geronimo’s final surrender. His hair was different. She remembered it being as black as hers and wondered what had put the white in it.

  Spence glanced at Matt, then back at Pace. “Been home lately?”

  “Not in a while.”

  Dammit, you two, Spence thought to his brothers. Look at each other! Talk to each other. Put a stop, once and for all, to the animosity, before you tear this whole family apart.

  But they wouldn’t. Spence knew his brothers. Two more stubborn, hard-headed men never existed. Spence had caught a look in Pace’s eyes now and then during the past few years, however, a look that said he might be ready to make peace with Matt. But the look always disappeared quickly. Damn these two.

  “What’s up?” he asked Pace. “What are you doing here?”

  Pace pointed with his chin toward the fresh grave at their backs but said nothing.

  “You knew about Chee.” Spence wasn’t surprised. That was Pace’s gift, to know things. Things he had no logical way of knowing.

  Their mother had visions. Serena could talk to Pace without words. Pace knew things.

  Spence had seen what burdens the gifts had placed on his mother and the twins and was grateful he was like the rest of the family. Ordinary. Or, as Joanna, Matt’s daughter, usually put it—with a twinkle of laughter in her eyes—normal. He wasn’t normal, of course, would never be normal again, would never live a normal life. But only he knew the truth.

  Spence shook off the thoughts. The day was grim enough without dwelling on even more things that couldn’t be helped.

  “This is LaRisa, Chee’s daughter,” he told Pace. “She just got here yesterday from Carlisle.”

  Pace gave a single nod. “I remember you. Your father was a good man. He’ll be missed.” His gaze shifted back to Spence. “What happened to him?”

  “It started with malaria,” Spence said in a clipped voice. “Fever. Chills. Bad ones. Then pneumonia.”

  Matt turned on Spence. “When the devil is modern medical science going to figure out what causes the malaria? It seems like nearly everyone in this place comes down with it.”

  Don’t I know it, Spence thought bitterly, avoiding Pace’s penetrating stare. He shook his head, then slapped at a bite on his neck. “I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it didn’t turn out to be these damn, bloodthirsty mosquitoes.”

  Matt ran his fingers through his hair. “When is somebody going to come up with a vaccine? Hell, they’ve got one to prevent smallpox, why not malaria?”

  “At the rate we’re going,” Spence said tiredly, “it’ll be another hundred years before they find a vaccine.”

  Pace swore.

  LaRisa felt the tension between Pace and Matt, strong and disturbing, as though it were a living thing.

  “What happened to your face?” Pace asked Spence.

  LaRisa glanced away and held her breath. He had removed the bandages this morning and his cheek was swollen and turning dark with
what would surely turn into a spectacular bruise. The sutures, neat though they were, looked painful.

  “Just a little accident,” he told Pace with a shrug.

  LaRisa waited for him to tell the rest. When he didn’t, she raised her startled gaze to him, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  She didn’t understand this man. But then, she didn’t understand men in general, or white people as a whole, so she didn’t know why the thought distressed her. She was grateful for the distraction, though, for it kept her from dwelling on her father.

  Spence led them down the low hill and into the shade of a pine thicket. Just getting out of the sun was a relief. A group of women walked by on their way back from the stream where they did laundry. Rosa was among them. She ducked her head and would not look at LaRisa. LaRisa frowned at the fresh bruise blossoming on Rosa’s cheek. It hadn’t been there last night.

  Mumbling something about being hungry, Pace turned to leave.

  Matt faced Spence and LaRisa. “We need to talk. I want to know how and why the two of you ended up married.”

  Pace whipped around. “Married?”

  Matt ignored Pace. “And I want to know what you’re going to do about the promises you made to Chee last night.”

  “How is that any of your business?” Spence asked.

  “Because I’m responsible for her being here,” Matt insisted. “As much as he wanted to see her, Chee didn’t want her to come here and see him the way he was. And he didn’t want her to end up having to live here, like the others. I promised him she wouldn’t. You promised the same thing, and so did she.”

  “She only did it to ease his mind and you know it,” Spence tossed back.

  “She made a promise to her dying father,” Matt insisted.

  “She can speak for herself,” LaRisa said sharply.

  Matt, who remembered her only as a sweet child, looked startled by her tone.

  LaRisa shot Spence a look. “You didn’t tell him why we got married?”

  “I didn’t figure it was any of his business.”

  “Yeah, sure, white man. What do you expect him to think, that we took one look at each other and fell madly in love? One look at your sutures ought to tell him different.”