Woman of Three Worlds (35 page)

“What good will that do? It's too late to keep the bodies from being dragged apart and eaten.”

“They were Apaches. Being buried the right way is a lot more important to them than it is to us.”

“Sometimes I think you've almost turned into one.” He brushed back a fall of auburn hair. “Brittany, that
ranchería
's going to be a mess. If you're set on it, I'll ride back and bury whatever I find around Kah-Tay's lodges.”

“I'm coming too.”

He shrugged. Dusk was gathering. He shoved earth over the fire and went off to his blankets.

About midmorning they reached the mouth of the canyon. Zach glanced at Brittany. “You can wait here while I ride up.”

In answer she reined La Dorada abreast of him. This was the way Kah-Tay had brought her. Along the washes and slopes, she had gathered blackberries, chokecherries, wild grapes, and acorns. It almost seemed that she could hear old Grouchy mumbling, Pretty Eyes's laughter, see Sneezes's big eyes peering out of his cradleboard as Fawn reached for a high branch.

Bracing herself for something like a battlefield months after an encounter, Brittany mistook several round white rocks for skulls, kept nervously alert for the first bleached jointed backbones that might have been scattered by scavenging beasts.

There was none. The canyon widened into the valley, the level area where Pretty Eyes's ceremonial lodge had been raised. There were still no broken skeletons, no buckskin or blankets rotting away from leg or arm bones, no sign that people had died violently in this lovely place.

Except for the burned wickiups, it would have been hard to guess that people had ever lived here. Brittany's scalp prickled. She turned to Zach in bafflement. “What's happened?”

“Mexicans wouldn't have cleaned up like this,” he frowned. “Some of Kah-Tay's bunch got away, or another group came through and did the burying.”

Brittany felt both relieved and frustrated. She could go on hoping Jody and her friends had escaped, but she'd probably never know. Her eye caught something hanging from a tree beyond the
ranchería
. She rode slowly over, halted with a gasp when she saw a small skull staring but over the lacings of a cradleboard.

Sneezes had not been protected by the lightning-blasted wood and badger's claw dangling from the sunshade, but at least kindly hands had placed him here and left a
tus
of water for his journey.

Zach grasped the reins, turned La Dorada about. “Let's get out of here.”

Brittany felt as if she were suffocating from a tight, hot swelling in her throat. After riding numbly for a while, she said, “I was there when that baby was born. He was the son of Big Jaw and Fawn.”

“One of the ladies who wanted to get me well enough to kill,” Zach said dryly.

“She must be dead or they couldn't have killed the baby.”

Zach didn't try to answer. It was night before they reached the canyon entrance. They camped without a fire, and Brittany was glad of the darkness so she could weep silently for the people she had known even while praying that Jody had been among those who escaped.

It was barely light enough to see when Brittany woke next morning to find Zach approaching with the saddled horses. “I have a hunch we ought to get moving,” he said as she hurried to pull on her moccasins. “Could be I'm spooked by that
ranchería
, but my skin's got that crawly feeling I've learned to pay attention to.”

Brittany was more than eager to leave those dead wickiups far behind. As they rode, she ate dried fruit and a piece of jerky. The sun never pierced the low clouds hanging on the mountain tops and there was a chill wind blowing. She reckoned that they were about halfway through their journey. Hard to believe it would ever end. She was no more inclined to conversation than Zach, who kept slightly ahead and kept scanning the rocks and hillsides.

He was always vigilant but in a natural fashion. Today he set Brittany on edge. They passed the side canyon where she'd taken him, unconscious, and found the cave refuge.

Did he remember? Probably not. He had been feverish both times he'd been brought through that narrow defile. “There's a spring ahead,” she ventured. “It's where I got water when we were trying to get away. But I didn't see a way out of this canyon. It seemed to end in a lot of cliffs.”

“There's a way.”

“How do you know?”

“I was through here scouting for O'Shea.” He motioned at the far end of the canyon, which indeed looked like a serried barrier of rock. “See where those big junipers are? They hide a cleft that's just wide enough to lead a horse through. It opens into a wash that will wind around and finally take us right up Guadalupe Canyon.”

“Where's that?”

“You probably camped there when Kah-Tay was taking you south. He must have dodged around to avoid patrols, but going the shortest route, it's a long day's ride from the post.”

Brittany's heart lightened. “That makes it sound close!”

“Maybe five days.” His gaze locked with hers. “I suppose you can hardly wait to see the major.”

Why did he harp so on Erskine? Brittany frowned. “Of course I'll be glad to see him,” she said frostily.

Zach's mouth tightened. He went back to that unnerving way he had of probing every grotto, every stand of tall bear grass. At the spring she had been so glad to find during their escape, they drank and watered the horses, but they didn't stop to rest.

“There's better grass on the other side,” Zach said.

It was hard to detect the passage till they were close to the thick junipers. They dismounted. Zach got his rifle out of its scabbard. “Maybe you'd better carry yours too,” he said. “If we run into trouble, let me shoot and you see to the reloading.”

He walked ahead, through the narrow opening. La Dorada had a few inches to spare, but his heavier gelding shaved the sides. It was as if long ago some mighty force had rent the cliff in two, leaving this all but hidden corridor.

It must have been a hundred feet before the track widened and sheer rock walls gave way to heaps of fallen stone and clumps of brush and trees. Zach halted, scanning each thicket and pile of rocks. He thrust his rifle in the scabbard, started to mount.

In that second a bush moved behind a nearby rock and turned into an Apache with leaves fastened to his head. Before Brittany could scream, before Zach could complete the swing of his leg over the saddle, rocks, grass, and bushes came alive with breech-clouted bodies.

A war club struck Zach's head. As warriors swarmed around him, Brittany hefted the rifle and took aim, but before she could fire, one man wrested the rifle from her hands and another caught her arms, taking her knife from its sheath.

“You aren't Chokonen,” he growled in that language. “Why do you wear these clothes?”

Terror made it hard to remember words she hadn't used in months, but she faltered, “I lived with Chokonen for many moons.”

“What of the man?”

“He's a scout for the Bluecoat soldiers.” Brittany got control of her voice and spoke boldly. “It would be well for you to keep our horses and rifles but let us go.”

Her captor laughed, a stocky, powerful warrior. “We will keep the horses and you too. The scout—well, one of our warriors was killed a moon ago by Bluecoats. His young widow can play with this White Eye.”

Zach had been trussed over the saddle. He stirred. Brittany started to run to him, but the warrior caught her arm. “You keep back here.”

Brittany tried desperately to think of some way to persuade these men to let them go. There was none. They seemed to be back almost exactly in the position from which they had escaped from the
ranchería
, except this time she'd be watched as closely as he, and in this band she had no friends.

The stocky man shoved her forward. Brittany stumbled to her knees, got up again, and started to walk.

XXVI

When Zach recovered consciousness, warriors untied his feet but left his hands bound tight together as they marched him along. Though her heart shriveled at the prospect of renewed captivity, Brittany had no fear of death for herself, or rape, though she didn't expect the kind treatment Kah-Tay's household had given her because of Jody. She could bide her time and sooner or later find a chance to break away.

But Zach—She thought of trying to warn him about his intended fate. It could save him hours of torture if he provoked his guards into killing him now. Yet she clung to the hope that something might happen.

From the conversation, though it was carried on using special warpath terms, Brittany gathered that this group had been living on the San Carlos reservation. With the coming of spring, they'd fled the hated place. It was in a brush with a pursuing cavalry detachment that the warrior Brittany's captor had mentioned had been killed.

This party of six men had been hunting when, from a ridge, they'd seen Brittany and Zach at the spring. Knowing the only way through the rocks, it had been easy to hurry down and prepare a welcome. Zach might blame himself, but Brittany knew there was no way that even an Apache could detect another who'd had time enough to select a position and hide.

Since these men were Chokonen or Chiricahua, like Kah-Tay, she asked the heavy-set man who seemed to have assumed charge of her if he knew anything of survivors of a Mexican raid in a nearby canyon.

“Were you wife to a warrior?” he demanded.

“No.”

“Then you were a slave. It is not for White Eye slaves to ask questions about their betters.”

“But—”

He gave her a brutal shove. “Quit dragging your feet, woman! We want to get home before dark.”

She and Zach hadn't eaten since breakfast. It was fortunate they'd drunk deep at the spring, for they passed no water and their captors drank from the water bags on the horses but offered the prisoners none. Brittany was toughened from the journey but not used to walking at this forced pace.

As they began to ascend a mountain, picking a precarious zigzag along the slope, her legs trembled with strain and she breathed through her mouth, gasping, when the way turned more sharply uphill. Since she hadn't expected to walk much, she'd neglected to resole her moccasins. A hole wore through in one. Rocks bruised her foot and she began to limp.

When the warrior herding her saw this, he disgustedly told her to mount. “White Eye women are a big nuisance. Can't do anything. I hope we can sell you to the Mexicans.”

“There's a Bluecoat
nantan
at Camp Bowie who'd pay well for the scout and me,” Brittany said.

“In bullets?” derided the warrior.

Brittany thought fast. “If you'd let the scout loose, he could go to this
nantan
and return with many horses, mules, blankets—much more than Mexican traders would give you for me. Some of those good things would be worth a lot more to your companion's widow than revenge on a stranger.”

“You must think me still in my cradleboard,” the Apache jeered. “The scout and that
nantan
would think of some way to trick and kill us after you were restored to them.”

“You could post sentinels and kill me if there were hidden troops.”

“Your words are smooth as bear tallow, but we know one thing. We have learned it well.” The heavy-shouldered warrior's voice was bitter. “When we make a bargain with White Eyes, we lose. Their promises bend and wriggle off like snakes. If we try to catch one, we are bitten.”

“If you would only—”

“Stop your noise. The scout is the widow's. As for you, the Mexicans might give a jug of mescal or a mule. Either would be worth more than you are!”

They wound up the side of the long stone palisaded mountain, the drops increasing in sheerness, so if La Dorada missed her footing, they would hurtle all the way to the canyon floor. Brittany took one dizzying glance. After that, she looked only at the cliff side or ahead. Though she dreaded reaching the camp, where Zach might be put to death this very night, it was a relief to reach a shoulder where tall pines guarded the sides of the slope. Snow had melted here recently, for a few splotches lay in sheltered spots not reached by the sun.

The shoulder led to a broad saddle between two peaks. In this grassy open expanse were brush-roofed ramadas and a few dozen lodges, some thatched with bear grass, others covered with canvas or blankets.

Men, women, and children dropped whatever they were doing to hurry forward and see what the hunting party was bringing in. One sturdy little boy ran faster than the others. Brittany's heart leaped, began to pound with joy.

“Jody!” she cried. “Jody!”

Six people were left of Kah-Tay's band, except for Jody and Sara, all warriors left for dead whom she had nursed back to health. Kah-Tay limped and a livid scar slanted from cheek to chin, but unmistakable joy lit his green eyes when he saw Brittany.

His renown as a warrior and familiarity with the region had made him one of the leaders of the camp, composed of fugitives from San Carlos and the remnants of his own band. By daring raids across the border and in Mexico, he was wealthy again in Apache terms. When he offered Brittany's captor a gift of two horses and three fat mules, the stocky warrior gladly reciprocated, by presenting the chief with both Brittany and her horse.

Zach was another matter. The widow to whom he was given, a pretty woman in spite of her hacked-off hair, shrilled her intention of making this White Eye whine and grovel like a singed dog. It would take a long time to ease her grief, but if he lasted, her friends could share the entertainment of finishing him off.

“Help him!” Brittany pleaded as she and Sara embraced. “Don't let that woman kill him!”

Zach, in earshot, though he couldn't understand what she was saying, ignored the widow, who was howling her plans and said quietly, “I don't think your friends can get me out of this even if they want to. Damn lucky they seem to have forgiven you for running off. Maybe Sara'll take you out of camp until”—he laughed in the shrieking woman's face—“this sweet little lady gets through with me.”