The Shaman's Secret (12 page)

I sat behind the boy. I was weak. Hunger, thirst and sickness were causing me to separate from my body. My head was floating. It felt like a dream, sitting bareback on that strong horse, shivering in the night chill, the boy inches away from me, guiding his animal through the starlit night. We galloped through the desert, the horse sure-footed. As we raced, the Apaches sang, a cruel wind-blown song. A song, unmistakably, of war.

When I did come back to my body, I took comfort from the horse, its warm limbs working under me. It was odd. I sensed that the boy rider in front of me was more scared of me than I was of him. But why? I was the captive here. The boy made sure to keep his flesh well away from me, had given me a rein to grip. He shuddered at the sight of me, as if I was some demon rather than a normal girl.

Incredible as it sounds, riding through the night I fell asleep. Or maybe I blacked out. I know not which. All I knew was that one minute I was there in the desert. Nothing around except that great animal's loping limbs, the murmuring song of the Apache band and the wind whistling past my ears. The next thing I knew I was waking
up in some sort of dwelling. I had been stripped of my clothes and was dressed in an embroidered buckskin dress with fringes. A strip of red calico had been bound round my head. Wherever we were, it was no longer the desert as the air was fresh and cool. I was covered with stinking animal skins, around me other bundles of bedding. It was morning. I could see sunshine flooding through gaps in the roof and the walls, which were made of twigs and grass. I guessed I was in an Apache home, a shelter made of twigs and brush called a wickiup.

I saw no sign of my friends and could hear nothing. No talking. No Aunt Hilda snoring or Rachel murmuring soothing nothings. I didn't even know if they were still alive. I didn't know anything except that I was alone.

Alone with these merciless Apaches.

A few minutes later someone put their face through a hole in the wickiup. It was a girl of about my age. I had the fleeting impression of brown skin and glossy black hair. Eyes that flickered about, searching for something. Our gazes met for an instant. I saw her terror. Then she vanished.

My captors were frightened of me. Frightened beyond reason. Why? I was a sick girl, without weapon. It made no sense.

As I sat up, the bundle of cloth next to me began to move. Straw-colored hair emerged from below the bedding. Relief flooded me. Waldo was here. Waldo. Then I saw it was Cyril Baker and disappointment nearly choked me. The old man was blinking, his beetle eyes looking around dully.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Kit?”

“Of course I'm Kit. Where are the others?”

“They separated us.”

“That's obvious. Why? What's going on?”

He didn't answer but shook his head, looking around with the same veiled gaze. Something had gone out of him. He looked stupid as an ox.

“What's the matter? Did they hurt you? Torture you?”

He shook his head. “When we came here, I wouldn't get off the horse.”

“What? Why?”

“I thought they were going to kill me.”

“You're not making sense.”

“They hit me over the head with a stick. I think I must have been stunned. That's the last thing I remember.”

“Never mind about that. Where are the others? My friends. What about my friends?”

“I don't know.”

“Cyril, you must gather your wits,” I said slowly. “I know we are both sick—but if we are not clever we will die here. These savages will put us to death.”

“I am dying anyway.”

“Enough stupid self-pity. You can save yourself. You can help save me. Be a man, not a chick—”

“They think we are witches,” he interrupted.

“Witches! Witches? But that's ridiculous. Maybe they think all white men are witches.”

He sat up and the blankets fell from him. I saw that he was dressed as I was, in a loose garment made from deerskin. If it wasn't such a desperate situation, I would
have laughed. He looked comical, that usually elegant man in the robes of a wild Indian.

“They do not suspect all white men, Kit. Just you and me.”

“Why?” Then suspicion struck. “How do you know?”

“I heard them talking. They think we are bewitched. Or witches. I do not understand everything they say. The meaning is clear. We are unclean. To be put to death. That's why I didn't get off my horse.”

Something about this struck me as odd. I looked at Mr. Baker hard.

“You're telling me you speak
Apache
?” The notion was unbelievable.

“Of course not. They were talking Spanish to your aunt. She was maddened, I can tell you, Kit. Thank goodness I have a few words of the language. At least I know what they believe. At least we can prepare ourselves.”

I sat very still. I could hear more now from the world outside the wickiup. Birdsong, the trickle of running water. People were moving out there. Apaches who hated us and, possibly worse, feared us. I heard voices, nearer now.

Finally I asked, “Why us? Why you and me?”

His pale eyes looked at me scornfully. Now it was my turn to be slow.

“Don't you know? Don't you understand anything?”

I shook my head, though I think I knew what he was
going to say. But he didn't talk, simply held out his arm and the deerskin gown fell loose. I saw the snake had moved and my heart contracted. I hadn't looked at my own brand for several days. Somehow, if I didn't look, I could put it out of my mind. Now I saw my own snake had moved over my elbow. Its head had turned the other way, toward my heart. For some time I gazed at the repellent thing, too upset to think.

“The boy who captured you, he saw the brand of the snake on your arm,” Mr. Baker said. “They searched us all for a similar mark and found one on me. You and I. We are condemned, Kit. Prepare yourself. They have gone to fetch the—”

Before he could finish, two men burst into the wickiup, hollering and shouting. They were strong-limbed and each over six feet tall. I would have called them handsome, for they had fine faces, if it wasn't for their wild air. They were both wearing hide gloves. One of them seized me by the arm and pulled me out into the open, treating me so roughly that my arm was half wrenched out of its socket. Through the pain I saw mountains, slabs of red rock, greenery, a broad stream and the thatched shelters that looked so like hairy heads. The air was fresh, mountain-clear. We must be high up, in some hidden Apache place. Indians swarmed, hair greasy, their faces smeared with ochre and daubed with war paint.

Aunt Hilda was sitting in front of a smoking fire, her hands tied behind her. By her side were Rachel, Isaac and Waldo, all of them bound hand and foot. My captor prodded me toward the fire. It was the barrel of a gun in my back. Waldo had been wrong. As I had realized last night, these Apaches had guns as well as bows and arrows. I saw a sawed-off shotgun, a Winchester rifle and a Colt as well as a couple of ancient carbines. They might be “savages,” as Waldo called them, but they were savages who knew how to use nineteenth-century weapons.

Cyril stumbled by my side, a shotgun urging him on. I remembered his unfinished words and called out to him:

“You said they were sending for someone. Who? Who are they sending for?”

“The medicine man.”

“What is a medicine man?”

“Not a doctor, obviously. A medicine man is a shaman. A priest.” He glanced at me quickly, then looked away. “We are on trial—for our lives.”

Waldo heard my exclamation and turned round, struggling to move with his bound hands and feet. When he saw me, relief flooded his face. I knew then that, whatever he said, he did not hate me. He did
care
.

For a fleeting second I forgot the guns bristling in this hidden clearing. I even forgot that I was about to be tried as a witch. I smiled at Waldo and he smiled back, and then I blushed, stupidly. A new determination gripped me. We
would
get through this.

I made my way to sit by Waldo, but the Indian prodded me in the other direction toward Aunt Hilda. I tried to ignore him, but he had a gun and was using it to poke me, so in the end I gave up and sank down on the log beside her. The Apache tied my hands tight behind my back, and bound my feet. Then, with a grunted word, he left. When he'd gone, my aunt gave me an affectionate grimace.

“Thought I'd seen the last of you.”

“I don't give up that easy.”

A lopsided smile on her pug-dog face. “No niece of mine is a quitter.”

This was the closest that Aunt Hilda had ever come to declaring her love for me.

“I've learned from the best,” I said, and meant it.

By my side, Cyril was not doing so well. Vivid splotches of red stood out on his deathly skin. His breathing was hoarse.

“Cyril,” I whispered to Aunt Hilda. “We need to do something.”

“What do you suggest? I dance the fandango?”

Rachel and Waldo and Isaac were all talking to me at the same time, asking questions, probing. I ignored them and replied to Aunt Hilda:

“He needs a doctor.”

“Not likely here, is it?”

I looked around helplessly. There were half a dozen wickiups in the camp, which was in a small clearing. Around us were red slabs of rock, thorny junipers and pinyon pines. We were in their stronghold, far away from the world of doctors and medicine. The English type of medicine anyway, not the Apache medicine of ghosts and herbs.

There was something wrong among the Apaches; you could tell that by the mutters, the downcast faces. Several of the women had black clay or soot smeared over their
faces. The grim sky was matched by the dark mood all around. I did not think it was just
my
mood, but I could not be sure. Of course, you would feel dreary if you were branded a witch.

We sat there, ignored, for a long time, maybe one or two hours. The life of the Apache camp went on and I tried to watch and understand. Knowledge is strength; if we knew our enemy it would be easier to escape. I saw the women engaged in various tasks such as sorting nuts and berries. They pounded seeds on a big flat stone into a sort of flour, which they mixed with water into a paste and dried in the sun. Everyone was very careful to avoid us, especially Cyril Baker and me. They didn't let their eyes dwell on me for more than a second before they flickered hurriedly away. Nor did anyone come close enough to touch me, or even for my breath to touch them.

That was fine by me. I had no love for them. I thought back to my earlier words to Waldo, when I had defended the Apaches' right to America. I had argued that these wild men had more right to the land than civilized Americans, who had traveled from European countries like England and Italy and Holland to settle in this vast land. I had been an idealistic fool. I realized now that my fine words about the Indians had been naive.

An expectancy hung over the camp, as well as a gloom. We were waiting for something—probably the medicine
man who would pronounce sentence on us. Once or twice I thought Waldo was trying to say something to me, over Aunt Hilda's head, with Rachel watching. His eyes had a pleading look, as if he was trying to say sorry. After a long period we were given some lunch, a tuberous root, a bit like a sweet potato, along with some mashed floury substance. It was food and we needed our strength to survive, so I ate. It was a little better-tasting than slumgullion. I gulped down some clear spring water with it. Then we were left to ourselves for many more hours. I felt weak, not with hunger and fear, but with the awareness that the prickling feeling in my head, which had dimmed in the desert, had returned with food and water. It really felt like something crawling, examining my thoughts. I would think something, then be infected by a wave of unease. Was someone watching me? Could they see into my mind?

I tried to distract myself by watching some boys of about fourteen playing together. The youths were lithe and strong, their flowing hair bound with crimson calico. They were burning something on their arms. A trial of strength, at which some screamed and flinched and others kept silent. Then someone noticed me watching and there were shouts of outrage. The party of boys vanished. More tedious hours followed, empty of everything but fear, and then finally the sun sank and a low wailing erupted from different parts of the camp.

It was an eerie song. I had never heard anything like it before. Though I knew it was human, it sounded like the keening of wild animals, like wolves or coyotes howling through the mesa. I feared it was for me, that these Apaches were chanting me and Mr. Baker to our graves.

I could smell smoke too. Not in front of us, from the tangy juniper fire, but something dry burning.

“It's the wickiups,” Aunt Hilda whispered to me. “God help us, they're burning their homes.”

Turning a little I could see two of the hairy dwellings blazing, the thatched grass crackling and sending showers of fiery sparks into the night air.

“Why?”

“I don't know. No … I remember now. Do they burn their wickiups when they're about to move camp?”

“You're the expert, Aunt Hilda,” I said. “You're the famous explorer.”

“Hmm,” she said, moving uneasily with her bound hands. “I might take up something a little more relaxing after this. Crochet?”

I couldn't help myself—the words just tumbled out. “If there is an after.”

Aunt Hilda's neck craned and her eyes glowered. “Never, ever, let me hear you speak like that again. I thought you weren't a quitter.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled, but my apologies were cut off by
a thunder of hooves and a great shouting as a party of horsemen rode into the camp. Braves rushed to help the new arrivals off the horses and the singers fell silent.

A very old man was at the center of the party. He had a face as wrinkled as a walnut, topped with a thatch of white hair. He wore a decorated deerskin tunic and hat adorned with eagle feathers and porcupine quills. A quiver of arrows hung behind him. Riding beside him was a slim young woman, with a fall of black hair down her back and magnificent flashing eyes. She was dressed in a loose tunic and moccasins that came up to her thighs. A knife glinted from the right boot. The girl had a dashing, boyish air. Unlike the other Apaches, who were frightened to look at me, her eyes locked with mine. I saw she was curious and very excited.