“Does that answer your question?” Joanna demanded. “Now, cut him down!”
The three men moved carefully toward Pace. Joanna cringed at the thought of all the dirt that would get into his open wounds when they laid him on the ground, but it couldn’t be helped. She could not let him hang from that tree for another moment, and she did not want Juerta or any of his men to see who was helping her. If word spread of Apaches on the loose in Mexico, the entire band would be annihilated.
The men cut Pace down and lowered him to the ground. Joanna still could not tell if he was breathing. God, please!
With her attention on Pace, she almost didn’t see Juerta grab his pistol from the ground. She levered another round into the chamber and fired. He would never be able to use his left elbow again, she thought with grim satisfaction. It was hard to tell which echoed longer, the sound of the bullet, or Juerta’s scream.
She turned back to the other three men. “You’ve got two minutes to get everybody out of this canyon. Anyone left behind will die.”
Vile curses spilled from Juerta’s mouth, but Joanna ignored him. She ground her teeth waiting while the three men hurriedly woke the others. One started toward the horses picketed at the side of the canyon.
Joanna fired a warning shot at the man’s feet. “Leave the horses.”
“You expect us to walk?” the man cried in outrage.
“Walk or die. It’s your choice.”
“But what about Don Rodrigo?” another man cried.
“Drag the bastard,” she told him coldly. “Or better yet, leave him to me.”
Juerta’s curses turned more vile as two of his men helped him stand and hobble toward the canyon entrance. The third man woke the others.
“Cover me,” Joanna told Dee-O-Det and Niño.
As she scrambled down out of the rocks, Niño gave the call of a morning dove, a prearranged signal to his men. Those on the canyon rim would be able to see Juerta’s group until they were out of the small box canyon and into the larger one beyond.
Joanna could not wait for the Mexicans to get all the way out. She jumped the last three feet to the ground and ran to Pace, praying every step of the way. She fell to her knees at his side.
“Is he alive?” Dee-O-Det called.
Frantic, Joanna reached out, then drew her hand back. “I don’t know!” God, he was so battered and bloody that she was afraid to touch him for fear of causing him more pain. She had been right earlier—he was naked. There wasn’t a single inch of skin that wasn’t scraped raw, cut, torn, punctured, bruised, swollen, or bloody. How could he live through whatever Juerta had done to him?
I shouldn’t have let the bastard go! Joanna thought fiercely. I should have cut him apart limb by limb! God damn him to hell!
“Pace,” she whispered. “Pace, can you hear me?”
He didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. She leaned close but heard nothing, not even a breath. But as she stared, she was finally able to discern the slight rise and fall of his chest. “He’s alive!”
But dear God, for how long?
Chapter Thirteen
The ride back to the Apache stronghold was a living nightmare. With strips torn from the blanket she had worn, Joanna and Dee-O-Det bound the worst of Pace’s wounds. Then they broke two long limbs off the dead tree from which Pace had hung and using another blanket that one of the Apaches retrieved from his horse, they made a travois to carry Pace.
They used it as a stretcher at first, with four Apaches carrying him up the back trail and out onto the mesa to the waiting horses. Then they tied one end of each pole onto one of the saddles, leaving the opposite ends to trail along the ground. On his blanket, Pace hung suspended between the two poles. Joanna used the rest of his bedroll to cover him.
Through it all, he made not a sound, moved not a muscle. When they started the long trek back, Joanna walked on one side of him, Dee-O-Det on the other.
Walking beside Pace wasn’t necessary, because there was nothing anyone could do for him until they reached the compound, but Joanna couldn’t bear to leave his side. If he came to, she had to be there. If he called out from the depths of his unconsciousness, she wanted to be near to reassure him that he was safe.
Safe? Dear God, if he lived until dawn it would be a miracle. Joanna’s stomach tightened another notch at the thought.
Three of the Apaches hung back and guarded the rear of the slow procession. Because they were essentially dragging Pace, they could go no faster than a walk.
The night seemed endless to Joanna. The stars and moon had never moved so slowly. She shivered in the cool air, but she would not complain, for she’d given her blanket to Pace.
She walked as long as she could, but her feet were blistered and the pain was terrible. She wasn’t doing Pace any good, and before long she wouldn’t be able to keep up. She finally allowed Dee-O-Det to convince her to ride for a while, but only if he would ride also. He was an old, old man, and he had no business walking hour after hour through the high desert night.
He gave in to her demand gracefully. Joanna had the feeling that he would have walked beside Pace every step of the way, if she had, no matter what it cost him.
“Will he live?” Joanna asked Dee-O-Det. She hadn’t meant to ask, but was unable to stop the question. She wanted someone to assure her that Pace’s wounds were not as serious as they looked. She needed that assurance, for terror still clutched her throat.
Beside her, the old shaman took a deep breath and stared up at the night sky. “Only Yúúsń knows, my child. Fire Seeker is young and strong. He has one of the strongest wills I know. But the wounds…You saw them. They are bad, Hair Like Fire. Very bad. Still, I think…”
When he fell silent without finishing, Joanna said, “You think?”
The old man cocked his head as if listening to a silent voice. After a long moment, he nodded slowly. “We will see when we get home. He will live that long, at least.”
As reassurance, the old man’s words left a great deal to be desired, but Joanna clung to them.
Hour after hour the night wore on. Sometime before sunup, the Apaches on “borrowed” horses prepared to leave the slow procession and race toward Basaranca to return the mounts before dawn. With them they would take extra mounts left behind in the box canyon by Juerta and his men. They would not have to walk back from town, and they would not have to “borrow” horses again.
As they rode away, Dee-O-Det spoke for the first time in hours. “Your grandmother, Woman of Magic…she will have seen. She will come.”
His words startled Joanna. She hadn’t been able to think of anything but Pace all night, but Dee-O-Det could be right. Gran could have had one of her visions that told her when someone she loved was in trouble.
Pace made his first sound, a groan of sheer agony, when they lifted him from the travois onto a pallet in the shaman’s wickiup at noon the next day, nearly twenty-four hours after Joanna had left him in the box canyon and ridden for help. The groan seemed to come from the depths of his soul.
Joanna’s eyes stung just hearing it. “Pace? Can you hear me?”
He made no response. Joanna looked to Dee-O-Det, but the old man merely shook his head. “We must clean the wounds,” he said. “It is best to get it done before he wakes. It will only hurt him more to wait.”
Joanna knew he was right, but she hesitated, afraid that underneath all the blood and gore, the wounds would be every bit as bad as she feared.
Nod-ah-Sti furnished a pitch-covered basket of water and Dee-O-Det sprinkled drops of oil and pinches of powder into it. This treated water was what they used to clean Pace’s wounds, but one or two dippings of a rag, and the water became so bloody that it had to be replaced.
Joanna’s hands trembled at first as she worked to clean Pace’s wounds, then they steadied as her senses became dulled by exhaustion and horror.
She’d been right to fear. How could one man suffer and bleed so much and still live?
But he w
ould live, Joanna vowed silently, if she had to drag him back from the gates of death with her teeth. You promised me, she told him. You promised me marriage, a home, children. Your children. The child I carry needs his father. You have to live, Pace. You promised to love me. You said we would grow old together. You have to live. You have to.
Some of the moisture that cleansed away his blood fell directly from her eyes.
Dee-O-Det, she noticed, touched Pace with a gentleness akin to that of a mother for her child. Together, Joanna and the old man worked through the afternoon, headless of the heat, disregarding their exhaustion. Pace’s medicine pouch kept getting in the way, but instead of taking it off, Joanna tucked it beneath her blouse.
They discovered three bullet wounds, one in Pace’s right shoulder, one in left his side, and one in his right thigh. Two of the bullets had passed all the way through his flesh, but the slug in his shoulder had to be dug out.
Joanna steeled herself as Dee-O-Det dug into the would with his knife. Blood gushed from the wound. Pace moaned and twisted as if to escape this new pain.
Swallowing hard, Joanna placed a hand on each side of the wound and pressed his shoulder to the ground. “You have to lie still, Pace. Can you hear me?”
He was far beyond hearing anything. Sweat poured from his face, neck, and chest. He heaved beneath the knife, and more blood gushed.
“No!” Joanna leaned down on him with all her weight while trying to stay out of Dee-O-Det’s way so he could find and extract the bullet. Still Pace moved. “Stop it!” she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks and onto his bloody shoulder. “Damn you, Pace Colton, if you move one more time, so help me—” A sob stuck in her throat and cut off her words.
Beside her, Dee-O-Det chuckled. “I think you are good for our Fire Seeker. He lies still now. Ah…there it is. I have it!” Slowly, carefully, with sweat beading his brow, the old man removed the bullet.
Joanna wanted to sag in relief, but there was no time. Quickly she folded a cloth and pressed it against the wound to stem the fresh flow of blood. She covered it with one palm atop the other and pressed with all her weight.
“If we can’t stop the bleeding we’ll have to cauterize,” Joanna said, fear clutching her belly at the thought of hurting Pace further.
“We will try honey first,” Dee-O-Det offered.
Joanna quailed. Uncle Spence, where are you when we need you? Packing honey into a wound to stop the bleeding was a practice as old as the hills, and it had been known to work wonders. But having a doctor for an uncle made her long for antiseptics, carbolic acid, anything to help fight off the massive infection likely from such numerous wounds.
But then, what did she know? Dee-O-Det had not lived to be older than God by not knowing how to survive. People had survived for centuries without modern medicine.
Many of them died needlessly, too, from a simple lack of knowledge.
Joanna shoved the terrifying thought aside. Pace trusted this man, and short of cauterization, Joanna had no real choice other than to trust him herself.
With his fingers, the old man scooped honey from a clay pot and packed it into the wound, then instructed her to apply pressure again. The bleeding stopped almost immediately.
“It works,” Joanna whispered, amazed.
“Of course it works,” Dee-O-Det said, a twinkle in his dark eyes. “A shaman does not waste his time on things that do no good.”
Now that the bullet had been removed from Pace’s shoulder, Joanna and Dee-O-Det tended to the rest of him. There were slits in the skin of both of Pace’s forearms and several slices across his belly, all of them looking like someone had carved him with a knife.
El Carnicero, Joanna thought with a rush of hate.
Pace’s other shoulder was dislocated. When they worked together and rotated it into place, Pace moaned. Both legs were broken, the left one in three places. They cleaned and set them. Pace moaned again, but still did not regain consciousness. Nod-ah-Sti sent Niño for wood to use for splints.
They suspected his nose was broken, too, but it was hard to tell for certain. His face was so badly beaten and swollen as to be almost unrecognizable.
All down his body, from forehead to toes, every inch of remaining skin had been scraped, torn, and ripped. Dirt and grit was ground into every wound, large and small, as if—Dear God, Joanna thought—as if Pace had been dragged behind a horse from one end of the box canyon and back again. His genitals looked as if they’d been beaten with a brick. Joanna deliberately shied away from thinking about the latter. There was nothing she could do but clean away the blood with hands that shook.
The old scars on his wrists were nearly gone, torn away by the rope that had tied him. Now there would be scars on top of his scars.
The worst of his wounds—stab wounds, knife slices, and the other bullet holes—were still bleeding. With every precious drop of blood, Pace’s dark-skinned face turned paler.
“Use this.” Nod-ah-Sti offered Joanna a slender steel needle and a spool of red thread. “Your stepmother sent them to me last year as a gift.”
At the thought of piercing Pace’s flesh with a needle, Joanna shuddered. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t poke any more holes in his skin!
Yes you can! her mind screamed back. You can do it, because you have to.
So she did it. She stitched what could be stitched, and Dee-O-Det packed honey into the remaining wounds that still bled.
When they had tended every wound they could reach, they turned Pace on his side to check his back.
Joanna whimpered at the sight. His back, buttocks, and the backs of his legs were a mass of torn, bloodied flesh, looking more like raw meat than a man’s body that only yesterday had joined with hers.
“I had heard that El Carnicero likes to use a whip.” Dee-O-Det inspected Pace carefully. “I see now that the stories were true. You should have killed that many-fathered coyote.”
“Yes.” Joanna ground her teeth against the urge to scream. “I should have peeled his hide off an inch at a time and fed it to him until he choked on it.”
Dee-O-Det arched one bushy gray eyebrow. “Are you sure you are not part Apache?”
With a fresh bowl of water, he and Joanna began cleaning Pace’s lacerated back.
Outside, people were gathering for the evening meal, but out of respect for Fire Seeker, they kept their voices low. Inside the wickiup the light began to fade. Using a fireboard and drill, Nod-ah-Sti started a fire in the stone-ringed pit in the center of the floor. Then she left, and returned a few moments later with a kerosene lantern to add more light to aid their work.
None of them spoke as they continued their grim task. The occasional crackle of fire consuming sticks was the only sound.
Then, into the quiet came Pace’s voice.
Old man?
Joanna gasped. “Pace?”
Dee-O-Det stared at her. “You heard him?”
“He’s awake?” Joanna studied his face for a sign that he could hear them. “Pace?”
“He is not awake, my child.”
“But—” And then Joanna understood. Pace had not spoken. His words had not traveled from his mouth to her ears. She had heard him in her mind, felt him in her heart. But he hadn’t been speaking to her! “You heard him?”
Pace’s voice came again, to both of them. I found it this time, old man.
“Found what, my son?”
The way into the Land Where the Cottonwoods Stand in Line. I have searched twice before. Do you remember? When I went alone into the mountains as a boy, to seek my vision?
“And came back a man. I remember.”
I did not find The Opening that time. I searched again last summer when the lightning came, but you said I could not go. But I found the entrance this time, my shaman.
“And you will go, Fire Seeker?”
“No! Pace, no,” Joanna cried. “You can’t!”
Firefly…I am dying.
“No!” Joanna leaned toward him, nea
rly strangling on her tears. “You’re not dying, do you hear me? I won’t let you die! I need you, your son needs you! Damn you,” she sobbed, “don’t you dare die on me now, after all the trouble we went through to get you back!”
Joanna…
A slow smile spread across Dee-O-Det’s face. “I think, my son, that your woman has other plans for you. I think maybe it is still not your time to join your ancestors. A man who is about to become a father has responsibilities. He cannot be going away whenever he feels like it. You rest a while now, and then you come back to us.”
Joanna swallowed her tears and waited. She was appalled at having yelled at a man at death’s door, but if Pace had heard her, she wouldn’t take back a single word.
“Pace?” she whispered.
“He cannot hear you now, Hair Like Fire.”
Joanna’s heart shuddered. For a moment, until she realized Pace was still breathing, she’d thought Dee-O-Det had meant…
“He will rest a while. Not well, and not without pain, but the deeper he sleeps the less pain he will feel. Let us finish this grisly task while he cannot feel so much.”
A thick, heavy darkness pressed down on him, and the darkness brought the cold, the kind of cold that settles deep into the bones like ice in a glacier and stays there. Somewhere, there was light, and warmth, if he could only find it.
But why should he struggle? If he remained still, he would sink deeper, and the darkness would take him down and down again until the warm mist would melt through the ice and tear a hole in the darkness, as it had earlier, and there would be sunlight and laughter, a clear stream lined with cottonwoods. Grandfather Cochise would welcome him. There would be no more pain. No more worry, no more daily struggle to do the right thing and hope it was good enough.
Why should he struggle when all he had to do was let the darkness carry him away?
Joanna.
The name whispered through the darkness and called him to turn away from the cottonwoods and the stream and his ancestors, called him to turn toward that other light. There would be warmth there, too, and tenderness, and love.
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