Bride of the Baja (13 page)

Soon Alitha's arms and shoulders ached and she had to sit back with the paddle resting on the timbers in front of her. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that the beach, the grassy slopes and the twin hills of the island were already beginning to look insignificant in the immensity of the surrounding sea. With a start of surprise she realized that she regretted leaving the island, although she knew she had no choice.

Taking a deep breath, she resumed rowing. The sea was calm, rising and falling in gentle swells, but even so water splashed over the sides of the raft, soaking them both. Each time she looked ahead, the land seemed no closer than before, so she bent to her task, her eyes on the furrow made by her paddle in the water.

Finally, exhausted, she laid the paddle at her side and lowered her face into her hands. She didn't look at Chia, but she heard the steady beat of his strokes. She heard the thump of waves on a shore, opened her eyes and saw the mainland a few hundred feet ahead. She began rowing again, and for a time they were swept parallel to the shore by the current. Seeing a beach, Chia pointed, and they rowed toward it as the current tried to sweep them past. Paddling with all the strength she had left, her arms heavy with fatigue, for a moment Alitha thought they had won the battle and would reach the sand.

She plunged the paddle into the sea with renewed fervor. They were safe—they had challenged the Pacific and won. She smiled across at Chia just as the raft rose on a cresting wave and was borne higher and higher, with the beach to their left and menacing black rocks to their right.

The wave broke in a shower of spray, sending the raft crashing forward onto the rocks and hurling Alitha into the water. As she tried to swim, she heard Chia's grunt of pain above the boom of the surf. Her hand touched a sandy bottom and she waded shoreward, finally pulling herself onto a rock shelf above the churning water.

Looking around, she saw Chia lying on the rocks near her. She stood up and climbed over the rocks toward him, expecting him to get up at any moment to brusquely lead the way ashore. He didn't get up. When she reached him she saw that one of his legs was twisted under his body.

As she tried to turn him over, he raised his head and she saw that his face was drawn with pain. He gestured weakly with his hand in the negative sign she'd learned. No, don't move him. Alitha stared down at the twisted right leg and saw that the foot was turned in at an impossible angle. She knew then that his leg was broken.

CHAPTER NINE

Alitha bowed her head in despair as she crouched over Chia. She was wet, she was exhausted. Without him, she was helpless on this alien shore. He moved, attempting to hunch himself to a sitting position. She looked at him and waved her hand in the negative gesture he'd so often used to her.

Chia's helpless but I'm not, she admonished herself. It's up to me now. She forced herself to touch his twisted leg. Though he made no outcry, she heard him catch his breath. What could she do for a broken bone?

When the seaman on the Yankee had fallen from the rigging off the Falkland Islands, her father had used canvas and wood to splint and straighten the man's broken leg, and in time the man had walked again. With a limp, to be sure, but he'd walked. Alitha looked about her. What could she use to splint Chia's leg?

The broken paddle caught her eye. Leaning over Chia, she unfastened the knife from his hair. He watched with pain-dimmed eyes as she waded into the water and retrieved the paddle. The sharpness of the flint knife surprised her as she trimmed off the splintered ends of the paddle after breaking the wood in two over her knee. But how was she to hold the pieces of wood in place on Chia's leg?

She looked at her ragged chemise. If she took any cloth from it, she doubted if the chemise would hold together enough to cover her. Chia, of course, was naked except for the net bag now wound about his waist. Could she use that? The net was fashioned of some kind of plant fiber; if she could unravel them..

Alitha knelt beside Chia, placing the two pieces of wood on either side of his right leg. She slipped strands of the rough twine under his leg and the wood and tied the upper ends. She took a deep breath and grasped his foot, which turned inward, and twisted so that the toes pointed up.

Chia grunted. Holding the foot in place between her knees, Alitha quickly lashed the wood to the leg with the remaining twine. Chia hadn't made another sound after the first moan, but she saw blood trickling down his chin and realized that he'd bitten his lip to keep from crying out.

Tears came to her eyes, but she brushed them away impatiently. He was the bravest boy she'd ever seen, but now she must be equally brave or he was doomed. He needed food and water, he needed shelter. The first thing she had to do was move him away from the beach.

Half-carrying, half-dragging him, she managed to get Chia over a slight rise to where a group of boulders formed a windbreak and also offered shade. Leaving him there, she hurried to cut foliage from nearby bushes, brought the branches back, then collected driftwood. Now he had fuel for a fire and could use the branches for a blanket.

It took her a long time to find and kill a number of the small, scuttling sand crabs, and she was disappointed to uncover only a few clams to bring to him. More of a worry was the fact that she'd found no fresh water. She fussed over him until Chia made the negative chopping motion with his hand.

"Rancheria," he said, pointing west along the beach. His finger then touched her gently. "Leeta," he said. Immediately he pointed west again.

Rancherias. She'd heard her father use that word for the Indian settlements on the Mexican coast. Did Chia want her to leave him and seek help from his tribe?

She pointed to herself, then west along the shore. "Rancheria?" she asked.

Chia smiled in agreement. He broke a twig from one of the branches and drew two circles in the dirt, gestured at the sky, then west again.

Two. Two suns? Moons? A two-day journey, is that what he meant? She thought it probable.

Alitha knew she'd have to make the journey, for Chia needed more help than she could give him—she doubted whether she could keep even one of them fed. Now was the time to begin walking west; now, while she had the strength. She leaned over and kissed Chia on the forehead, stood up and started off without a backward look.

The soles of her feet had grown considerably tougher from the days on the island, but by nightfall both feet throbbed with pain. She had walked along the beach as much as possible because of fear of losing her way, but now she turned her back on the ocean, searching until she found a crevice among the boulders where she could huddle until morning. She had no way to make a fire, and she'd returned the knife to Chia.

Though she fell into an exhausted sleep almost immediately, she woke with a gibbous moon still overhead. She was chilled through. Alitha rose, wincing when her feet took her weight. If I have to keep moving to stay warm, she decided, I may as well walk toward the rancheria.

The moon made a shining path on the water, a path leading to the west. To the islands and Thomas. What would he think if he could see her now, barefoot, nearly naked and almost as brown as a savage Indian? Would she ever see Thomas again?

Alitha blinked back tears. No, she couldn't afford to waste her energy crying for what was beyond her reach. Just as she couldn't allow herself to grieve for her father. Not now.

An animal howled somewhere in the hills to the north. Another answered, then another. Wolves? Were there wolves in California? She didn't know. The wailing rose eerily until she felt the sound came from all around her. Alitha broke into a run, stumbled on a rock and fell headlong. Curling herself into a protective ball to ward off whatever terror stalked her, she huddled against a bleached log. The howling rose and fell, diminished and died away altogether. Relaxing, Alitha slipped once again into the welcoming oblivion of sleep.

The sun, warm on her bare arms and legs, woke her. Yards away, waves lapped on the sand. She raised her head and two stilt-legged shore birds skittered away from her. She sat up and was immediately conscious of a desperate desire for water. Her tongue felt dry and thick, too big for her mouth. Getting to her feet, she stared westward along the sand. She could see no streams making their way into the sea.

She hesitated, aware she wasn’t headed south. She changed direction, tears running down her cheeks as she limped along. When she finally recognized the scent of burning wood, she realized she'd been smelling the smoke for some time. Anxiously she scanned the sky above the trees.

There! A drifting plume of gray-brown. She broke into a clumsy run.

Alitha splashed through the water of a small stream, wondering vaguely if this was the one she'd found earlier, and was brought up short on the far bank when she caught sight of a large domed dwelling. At the same time she heard a woman call sharply in a language she didn't understand. She turned and saw an Indian squaw staring at her. Behind the woman, smaller domed lodges were scattered in a clearing.

The Indian woman had long black hair cut in bangs across her forehead and wore a band of seashells around her hair. She was bare to the waist, but a two-piece skirt covered her in front and in back, ending at her knees. The skirt looked like deerskin and was fringed at the bottom and decorated with small colored stones and shells. She spoke to Alitha again, unintelligible words, and Alitha shook her head.

"Senorita?" the Indian asked.

Alitha knew the meaning of this but she didn't want the woman to misunderstand and think she was Spanish so she shrugged, holding out her hands, palms up.

The squaw turned her head to call to others who were, Alitha now saw, near the domed lodges. Four women hurried toward her. Joining the first squaw, they surrounded Alitha, reaching with curious fingers to touch her hair and the material of her bedraggled chemise.

Alitha tried to control her alarm. She patted her stomach and pointed to her mouth. Chia had been quick to understand gestures, maybe the women would be, too. One of the women took her hand to lead her toward the lodges. When she saw Alitha followed her willingly, she dropped her hand and went ahead. The three others acted as escorts.

Am I to be a captive. Alitha wondered? She glanced at them, recalling the tales she’d heard or read of white women captured by savages. She was almost past caring, if only they would feed her and let her rest.

No! She mustn’t forget that Chia was waiting for her to send help. Surely this village was the rancheria he came from.

“Chia,” she said, “Chia.”

One of the women smiled and hurried away as though she’d understood. Was she going to get Chia’s mother? His father? Alitha looked about. She stood among the large lodges—she counted ten of them—all made of some kind of vegetation, each with two doors.

More women came to stare at her but nowhere did she see a man, although small naked boys mingled with equally naked girls. When everybody wanted to touch her air, she finally realized a blond woman must be unknown to these Indians.

Still, they spoke a little Spanish, so there must be some form of civilization nearby. A mission?

One of the women handed her a chunk of cooked food she couldn’t identify. It made no difference to her, hungry as she was, and she wolfed it down. A vegetable of some kind, she decided, sweetish and with a flavor rather like wine.

The women smiled and nodded at her appetite. Another brought out a shell filled with a kind of flour paste. Shamelessly, Alitha lowered her head and licked the shell clean. One of the women giggled. She was handed what was unmistakably a dried fish, and she ate that, too.

At last, her hunger satisfied, she shook her head at more offerings. "Chia," she said once more.

The woman who had apparently understood the word the first time handed her a small, beautifully woven basket. She removed the lid and the pungent smell of sage entered her nostrils.

"Chia," the woman said, smiling.

Alitha stared from the basket in her hand to the woman. Had she misunderstood?

"Chia," Alitha said and the woman nodded happily.

Alitha had never considered that Chia's name might mean something in another language. How was she to get these women to understand?

She reached out and caught the arm of a small boy hiding behind one of the women. Pointing to the boy with her free hand, she repeated, "Chia." She raised her hand a foot above the boy's head, hoping they'd understand she meant a larger child. "Chia," she said again. The boy began to squirm in her grasp and she let him go.

Looking about the circle of staring faces, Alitha knew they didn't have any idea what she meant. She picked up the discarded shell she'd licked clean and drew a jagged circle in the dirt. The island. She drew shallow wavy lines, then a definite deep line to show the coast. Taking two twigs from the ground, she moved them from the island to the coast, then broke one of the twigs and moved the other until it touched her breast.

The women murmured among themselves, frowning. "Oh, please," Alitha cried. "You must understand me. Chia is hurt. He needs help."

But no matter what she did, they didn’t know what she wanted.

/At last, exhausted, she allowed a woman to lead her to one of the round lodges. Inside, the woman shyly proferred hide skirt, the two pieces strung on a fiber band. Gratefully, Alitha put it over her chemise, tying the band firmly about her waist.