Apache Flame (15 page)

In retaliation, Bascomb hanged three of Cochise’s relatives.
Later, it had been proven that Cochise and his Apaches had been innocent.

Alisha wiped the sweat from her brow. She had known the
journey to Apache Pass would be dangerous, but, in the excitement of learning
that her son was alive, she had foolishly disregarded it. And now she was about
to pay the ultimate price for her foolishness. She didn’t know if these Indians
were Apaches or not, but it made no difference.

She gazed into the distance. There was little to see but
desert and sage and cactus, a bold blue sky, a blazing sun.

She wondered how long it would take for the Indians to reach
their village, and what would happen to her when they arrived. Would they rape
her? Torture her? Scalp her? She had read of the atrocities committed by the
Indians but, safe and secure in her sheltered life, it had all seemed distant
and unreal, something that happened to other people. Until now.

She glanced at the Indians beside her again, and thought of
Mitch. He was half Apache. If he had been raised by his mother’s people instead
of by his father, he would have been a warrior, like these men, clad in
buckskins and feathers, and they would have been enemies. She thought of her
son, being raised by the Apache. Clements had said that a boy of four was
already well on his way to being a warrior. She tried to imagine her son as a
grown man, a warrior on the warpath, attacking innocent women and children,
burning ranches, stealing cattle.

Lost in thought, it took her a minute to realize the Indians
had stopped. She was surprised to see that the sun was slipping below the
horizon. The warriors dismounted and began setting up camp. One of the men
dragged her off the back of her horse and gave her a push. She stumbled
forward, tripped on a rock, and fell. With her hands bound, she was unable to
break her fall. She cried out as her head struck the ground.

With a look of disgust, the warrior who had pushed her
grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her into a sitting position. Lifting a
waterskin from the back of his horse, he took a long swallow, then thrust the
container into her hands.

“
Hibitu!
” he said, and gestured for her to drink.

“
Tobo? Ihupiitu!
”

She gasped, water trickling down her chin, when he jerked
the waterskin from her hands.

It took only a few minutes for the Indians to set up their
night camp and soon a small fire brightened the gathering dusk. The men sat
around the fire, talking and laughing while they ate. The warrior who had offered
her a drink thrust a hunk of dried meat into her hands, then went to sit with
the others.

Fear did not make for a hearty appetite, neither did the
food she had been offered, but she forced herself to eat. Mitch had once told
her that no matter what the circumstances, survival must always be the first
order of business. She would keep up her strength just in case she found an
opportunity, however unlikely that seemed at the moment, to escape.

An hour later, the warriors rolled up in their blankets and
went to sleep, save for two who stood cloaked in the shadows of the night,
keeping watch.

Alisha shivered as a cool evening breeze blew over the land.
The Indians had offered her food and drink, but no blanket to turn away the
cold. Huddled into a ball, her bound hands numb, she closed her eyes and tried
to sleep. But sleep would not come. Morbid thoughts and fears of the fate that
awaited her when the Indians reached their destination crowded her mind,
keeping sleep at bay.

How slowly time passed when one was cold and lonely and
afraid.

To take her mind from her troubles, she thought about Mitch.
He had always been there to save her when she got into trouble in the past, she
mused. Of course, most of the time, he had been the one who got her into
trouble in the first place, like the time they had gone hiking in the
foothills. She had been about ten at the time. It had been a beautiful warm
summer day. Mitch had fallen a little behind her because she had run ahead to
gather a bunch of flowers growing wild on the hillside.

Humming softly, she bent down to reach for a bright yellow
bloom growing between two small rocks.

“‘Lisha! Don’t move!”

She stopped and glanced over her shoulder at Mitch,
wondering what was wrong. And then she heard the unmistakable warning rattle.
Looking down, she saw the snake coiled less than a foot away. She stared at the
diamond-shaped head, the forked tongue darting in and out, the tail with its
ugly rattles. Her first instinct was to run, screaming, down the hill.

“Don’t move, ‘Lisha.” Mitchy’s voice was soft and low this
time, soothing. “Don’t move. He’s just as afraid of you as you are of him.”

Somehow she doubted that. The snake didn’t look scared, only
mean and ugly, with its beady black eyes and scaly skin.

“Listen to me, ‘Lisha. I want you to back up, very slowly “

She shook her head, afraid to move, afraid to breathe. She
had once seen a trapper who had been snakebit. He had staggered into town, his
leg all black and swollen. The doctor had cut off the man’s leg in an attempt
to save his life, but the poor man had died anyway.

“‘Lisha. ‘Lisha.”

She looked into Mitchy’s eyes and some of her fear melted
away.

“Trust me, ‘Lisha. I’ll get you out of there. One step at a
time,” he said. “Slowly. Now.”

Heart pounding with fear, certain the snake would strike the
minute she moved, she took a small step backward.

The snake’s tongue darted in and out, testing the air.

She took another small step backward, dislodging a rock that
rolled down the hill.

The snake’s tail vibrated faster, the whir of its rattles
sounding like dry bones rattling in a tin cup in the stillness that seemed to
have settled around her.

“It’s all right. Come on, ‘Lisha. Come here to me.”

Slowly, small step by small step, she followed the sound of
Mitchy’s voice. He would save her. Heart hammering in her breast, she backed
away from the snake. Weak with relief, she fell into Mitchy’s arms…

How she longed to be in his arms now, she thought, to tell
him that she loved him, that the child born of their love for one another was alive
and living with the Apaches.

She looked up at the night sky. Never had she felt so alone,
and yet she wasn’t alone.

Please, God, please help me. I know You’re up there. I know
You can hear me. Please, God, please help me get out of this mess so I can find
my son. And please bless Mitchy. I love him so much…

A sense of peace filled her heart. With a sigh, she closed
her eyes and slept.

* * * * *

Mitch sat cross-legged on the ground, gnawing on a piece of
jerky. He’d ridden back to the place where he’d found Clements and picked up
the trail of the Indians. He wasn’t the world’s best tracker, but the Comanches
weren’t making any effort to hide their trail and he’d had little trouble
following them until darkness swallowed up their tracks, forcing him to stop
for the night.

He tried not to think about how afraid Alisha must be,
refused to even consider that the Indians might have killed her. He’d go crazy
if he thought that. No, she was alive and well, and he would find her. He had
to believe that. He could well imagine her fear. She’d have no reason to
believe anyone knew where she was, or that Clements was alive.

And yet, over and above everything else, he wondered why she
had been traveling to Apache Pass in the first place. Clements had told him she
claimed to have family there. Clements had seemed lucid enough, but maybe he’d
been out of his head with pain and fever. Lord knew he was badly hurt. Mitch
grunted softly. Surely if Alisha had family living with the Apaches, she would
have mentioned it to him long ago. While growing up, they had spent a good deal
of time talking about his mother’s people, both of them curious about the
Apache way of life

Family. He was still puzzling over what that could mean when
he crawled under his blanket and went to sleep.

* * * * *

White Robe sat outside her lodge, sewing the sole to a
moccasin she was making for Otter, when Elk Chaser and the others returned to
the stronghold. Laying her sewing aside, she ran toward her husband.

Elk Chaser smiled, pleased that she had missed him though he
had been gone but two days and a night.

Rides the Buffalo jumped off his pony and ran toward his
mother. “A deer,
shi ma
, I killed a deer.”

“Enjuh,
” she replied distractedly. “That is good.”
She hugged him quickly. “You must tell me all about it later. But first I must
speak to your father.”

Hearing the concern in his wife’s voice, Elk Chaser
dismounted and tossed the reins of his horse to his son. “Look after our
horses,
ciye
.”

Rides the Buffalo started to say something but a stern look
from his father stilled his tongue. Taking up the reins to his own horse as
well, he turned and walked toward the river.

“Something troubles you, my wife.”

“Yes,” she said, and quickly explained what had happened
while they walked to their lodge. “And so,” she said, “he has gone on his own
to find her.”

Elk Chaser nodded. It would have been wiser to wait for
help, but he understood Otter’s impatience. From what White Robe said, Otter
had deep feelings for the white woman.

“I will find Diyehii and Cheis and we will go after him.”

“
Ashoge,
my husband. I will have food for your
journey prepared when you return.”

With a nod, Elk Chaser went to find Diyehii and Cheis.

* * * * *

Alisha gazed into the distance, the countryside as foreign
to her eyes as the language of her captors was to her ears. It was like being
caught in a nightmare from which she could not escape.

That morning, she had been roused from a troubled sleep
while the sky was still dark. A warrior who had managed to convey to her that
his name was Mukwooru had offered her food and drink, allowed her a moment of
privacy, then lifted her onto the back of her horse. Taking the reins, he had
vaulted onto his own mount. That had been hours ago. She wondered how much
longer it would take to reach their village, though she was in no hurry.
Wondered what they had been doing so far from home in the first place.

But, over all, was the mind-numbing fear of the future, of
what fate awaited her when they reached their destination.

She glanced at Mukwooru, riding beside her. He was only a
little taller than she was, though he was heavily muscled. He had long black
braids, dark copper skin, and a face as hard and unyielding as stone. He wore a
buckskin shirt, a breechclout, and a sort of boot, painted blue, that reached from
his foot to his hip. A single eagle feather was tied in his hair.

She quickly turned her head away when he caught her staring.
She looked down at her bound hands, overcome by a feeling of despair. Even if
the Indians didn’t kill her, she would never see her son, never see Mitch or
any of her friends again. Faced with the possibility of living with Indians for
the rest of her life, she thought she would rather they killed her. Better that
than live with a people she would never understand, who would never understand
her.
Give me liberty, or give me death!
She smiled as the words of
Patrick Henry flitted through her mind. Bobby Moss had played the part of
Patrick Henry in the Fourth of July pageant last year…

She sighed, wondering who the school board had found to
teach school in her absence. She would miss teaching, just as she would miss
Bobby and Becky and Lucinda and all her other students.

But it was Mitch she would miss most of all. She blinked
back her tears, thinking of all the years they had lost, years they might have
spent together if her father hadn’t interfered.

“Oh, Papa,” she whispered. “How could you have done such a
thing?”

But for her father’s lies, she and Mitch would have been
married now, living together, raising their son. They might have had other
children.

The Indians made camp at dusk. Thoroughly weary, she sat
down where Mukwooru indicated, accepted the food and drink he offered her. By
the almost jovial mood of the men, she surmised that their journey would soon
be over. Once they reached the Indian village, there would be little chance for
her to escape. And even if she did, where would she go? She wouldn’t last more
than a day or two out in the wilderness on her own.

Despair and discouragement weighed heavily upon her and she
tried to fight them off, tried to find a ray of hope in the morass of
hopelessness that perched on her shoulder like a carrion crow. But, try as she
might, she could see no way out of her present situation. She was hopelessly
lost in this hostile land, hopelessly ill prepared to survive in this barren
desert the Indians called home.

She gasped as a young man grabbed her by the arm and hauled
her to her feet. The other warriors gathered around, their expressions curious,
or amused, or lustful, as the young man lifted a lock of her hair and let it
fall through his fingers. He said something that made the other men laugh, and
then he reached for the ties of her tunic. Several of the men called to him,
apparently urging him on.

With a cry, Alisha jerked away, her heart pounding with
terror as she realized her worst fear was about to come true.

The warrior growled something at her and then, his face
etched with fury, he slapped her across the face, hard enough to make her ears
ring. Clutching her left shoulder with one hand, he reached for the tie on her
right shoulder with the other.

She stood there a moment, her cheek throbbing.
Oh, Lord
,
she thought,
please help me. I’m so afraid.

And like the answer to a prayer, the words of one of her
father’s favorite Psalms whispered through her mind. O Lord my God, in thee do
I put my trust. Save me from all them that persecute me, and deliver me. Lest
he tear my soul like a lion, rending it to pieces, while there is none to
deliver.