Sun God (33 page)

Her lips were badly chapped and cracked, her face blistered from the savage rays of the unfiltered mountain sun. Pain hammered at her temples. Her throat was so sore she could barely swallow. Her chest ached from bouts of smoke-triggered coughing. Her stomach rolled, protesting the greasy, half-cooked meat she was given for breakfast.

Since arriving at the Mescalero hideout at midmorning, Amy had been staked out like some trapped, prized animal for the curious to examine. When her captors had brought her into the camp, everyone—men, women, and children—had come running. All eyes had locked on her.

Her stocky captor had beamed proudly and lifted a dirty hand to push Amy’s long, tangled hair from her face so his people could get a good look. At first there was a low, speculative hum, then thoughtful nods, shouts of approval, and a sea of coppery faces all smiling up at her.

Minutes later Amy had found herself lashed to the cedar pole as the Mescaleros built up fires and hurried excitedly about as if some kind of big powwow was about to take place.

Among the men there was a lot of staring and talking and pointing, first at her, then toward the barely visible top of an animal-skin wickiup set apart from the others on an elevated location amid the tress.

Amy’s gritty eyes lifted to follow their pointing fingers. She could not understand their language, but it was clear they were discussing her, so she supposed they had picked that secluded wickiup as the place they would hold her. If that was the case, she hoped they would soon take her there. After three days of travel in which she had not been allowed out of her captor’s sight for a minute, the prospect of a small degree of privacy was incredibly appealing.

A tugging on her skirt drew Amy’s attention from the men and the distant wickiup. Amy frowned down at a short, obese squaw who was smiling and clutching at the hem of her soiled blue cotton dress. Amy croaked her outrage when the woman reached underneath and tore a strip of lace from her dirty white petticoat.

Pleased with herself, the fat woman’s body shook with laughter and her flat, glittery eyes disappeared into folds of coppery flesh. She turned around and held the lace high in the air, waving it proudly back and forth.

The gesture seemed to be a signal to the other women. They all crowded closer. A tall young maiden stepped forward. She looked into Amy’s eyes with unveiled hatred. She reached out, plucked at a blue puff sleeve until it tore loose and sagged down Amy’s arm.

It was noon—the beginning of a long, sweltering afternoon of torment for the trussed Amy. The women laughed and rushed at her, tore at her dress and yanked painfully at her long hair. Hour after miserable hour they snatched and tore and tortured, until Amy was left nearly unclothed.

Her blue dress and full petticoat were torn to shreds. All the dress’s buttons had been yanked off. Her lace-trimmed chemise had been ripped down the middle. It hung limply, exposing the inner curves of her breasts. Her bare legs and thighs were visible beneath the torn dress and petticoat.

Her dignity and modesty were now completely violated and still the women pulled at her ruined clothes. Amy was sure they would not stop until she was left standing totally naked. She rolled her bloodshot eyes in despair, then closed them against the women and against the harsh rays of the sun.

The day finally drew to a close, but not the torment.

At sunset a chuckling woman with long black braids grabbed the lacy edge of Amy’s drawers and yanked. The delicate lace ripped loose from the satin. The wide band of lace slid down Amy’s thigh, slipped over her knee and calf, and whispered down around her bound ankle.

The braided squaw stared at the trapped lace, shook her head, and reached out again. Amy moaned with desperation when the woman clutched at the left leg of her satin underwear.

Just as the delicate fabric began to tear, a man’s voice rose above the din and the squaw immediately turned loose the satin underwear. Relieved and puzzled, Amy watched the woman back away.

A sudden hush fell over the bustling camp.

The women seemed to quietly melt away, leaving Amy standing alone, the dying rays of a bloodred sun tinting her bare arms and legs with color.

Amy looked past the retreating women and saw a throng of breech-clothed braves steadily advancing on her.

They too were silent. When the men were twenty yards from her, they halted as one and looked straight at her.

The camp had grown eerily quiet. The children had stopped running and squealing. The babies had stopped crying. Even the dogs had ceased their continual barking.

Baffled, Amy looked cautiously about. She had no idea what was happening, why the women had suddenly left her alone and why everyone had fallen silent.

After countless minutes, while the entire tribe seemed frozen permanently in place, the phalanx of braves parted, making a wide, long path down the middle of their number that led toward the tree-hidden wickiup.

All eyes went to that path, including Amy’s.

For a time, nothing happened. Then a tall, lean buckskin-clad man came down that path, the top of his dark head visible above the crowd. He emerged into the clearing and the blood in Amy’s veins turned to ice water.

The tall chief paused. He stood with his feet apart and hungrily looked her up and down. Amy’s flesh crawled.

His was the most repulsively ugly face she had ever seen. His eyes were small, beady, and glittery, and far too close together. His nose was a huge, bulbous blob on a cadaverous thin face. His mouth was nothing more than a wide grotesque slash in his narrow face. He was smiling evilly and looked as if he were about to drool.

He was monstrously ugly and under his arm he held a more monstrously ugly mask. A ghastly carved devil’s mask with long, sharp horns of crimson red, chilling marble eyes with slits below, and a long leather tongue and ferocious fangs.

Amy’s heart quit beating when the evil-looking man with the evil-looking mask started toward her. Tall and spare, he walked slowly across the clearing. The way he moved his lean, long body made it seem as if he were slithering toward her, like a slippery snake.

When he stopped directly before her, Amy instinctively cringed and tried to draw away, every muscle contracting in an attempt to escape him and his dreadful beady eyes. Those glittery eyes slid from her frightened face, moved over her throat, and paused pointedly at her breasts.

Amy convulsed with horror when he lifted a hand, slipped it inside the torn satin chemise, and gave her bare, trembling left breast a painful squeeze. She screamed loudly and he released her. His eyes returned to her face. He smiled at her, his slash of a mouth stretching from ear to ear. And then a long, reptilian tongue darted out three or four times in quick succession as he pointed his forefinger at her breast. Amy shuddered with revulsion at the thought.

She fought wildly against her restraints when, his tongue darting in and out like a snake’s, he swept away the tattered blue skirts of her dress and groped at her right thigh, attempting to slide his fingers underneath the satin of her underdrawers. Her eyes wild, every cell in her body screaming against the invasion, Amy tossed her head from side to side and shouted at him to leave her alone.

His hand dropped away, but he smiled and shook his head. He spoke, clearly addressing her. Amy could not understand the words, but his actions and attitude made his meaning all too horribly clear. Grinning diabolically, the ugly chief grabbed his crotch, humped it vulgarly against his cupped hand several times, then pointed from himself to her groin and back again. He nodded and darted his tongue out as his glittery eyes shone with depraved lust.

Amy lurched frantically when he moved. He laughed uproariously. He lifted the evil-looking devil’s mask, put it over his head, and settled it securely. Those lecherous eyes gleamed at her from under the marble eyes of the mask, and his long tongue darted out atop the mask’s leather tongue.

Paralyzed with fear and horror, Amy realized his intention. He was going to rape her. And he was going to do it while he wore the hideous mask.

Abruptly the masked chief turned and walked away. He went back to his assembly of warriors and spoke excitedly to them, turning to look over his shoulder at Amy. Amy strained to hear what he was saying. She couldn’t speak the Apache tongue, but gestures and an occasional word of Spanish was enough for her to understand exactly what he was saying.

Chief Snake Tongue told his men that he was more than pleased with the white woman they had brought to him. She was the prettiest one he had ever had. So pretty, he intended to take her for his wife, to father a dozen children by her.

He was going now into his wickiup to wash his armpits and groin and lay out his best fur beds for his new white woman. When he was finished, he would come back out, cut the pretty captive down from her pole, carry her to his wickiup, and make her his woman.

Tongue darting obscenely out of his mask, he hurried off toward his wickiup as the last traces of pink disappeared from the sky. The silence that had descended over the camp with his arrival ended. Braves patted each other on the back, congratulated one another, and looked forward to a long night of glorious celebration.

In minutes drums began to throb and children squealed and chased each other. Dogs barked excitedly and chattering women started preparing the celebration feast. It was a time of great joy in Chief Snake Tongue’s Chisos encampment. At long last the perfect mate had been found for their leader. Life would be easier for everyone now that the chief had a pale-skinned woman to lie with each night.

As the last traces of pink disappeared behind the Chisos Mountains, Amy pleaded pitifully for someone to help her. Knowing that a fate far worse than death awaited her in the evil-looking chief’s wickiup, she cried and begged passersby to cut her loose.

No one paid her any mind. They went cheerfully about their chores, uncaring that she was so terrified she was nearly hysterical. Desperate, she called out to a small naked child. The little girl peered at her curiously, moved closer, and Amy felt a tiny surge of hope spring to her breast.

When the big-eyed child stood directly before her, Amy, jerking with sobs, caught her breath and said, “The leather cords, untie them. Behind my back. My hands, untie my hands.”

The child stared at her for a long minute, then wandered around behind her. Amy thought she might explode with elation when she felt the tiny girl’s fingers tugging at the leather bands securing her wrists.

“Y-Yes—yes,” Amy encouraged, tears pouring down her cheeks. “Untie them and—”

Abruptly the child’s hands were ripped away and an admonishing woman loudly scolded, picked up the tiny girl, and carried her off.

Amy slumped in defeat and her head sagged to her chest.

But a loud commotion caused her to lift it immediately. Anxiously she blinked the tears from her eyes, looked up to see what was happening, and died a thousand deaths in that split second.

From out of the darkness the masked chief was slowly, surely approaching her while his people cheered and clapped and urged him on. The beat of the drums grew deafening as the shadowy figure in the devil’s mask reached her. He stood unmoving before her, a tall, lean symbol of unspeakable evil and perversion.

Amy couldn’t breathe. She was swallowing convulsively, choking. All at once the chief drew a sharp knife from the waistband of his buckskins, and Amy’s breath whooshed loudly out of her lungs.

The knife blade flashed menacingly in the firelight and Amy began to scream. The masked chief stepped behind her and slashed the leather thongs binding her wrists to the cedar pole. Her stiff, weak arms fell to her sides and the momentum threw her off balance. She was about to pitch forward onto her face when he was back before her, his flattened palm on her waist, steadying her.

His hand stayed there while he crouched down, cut the leather restraints from her ankles, then rose. Pressing her to the pole with the flat of his hand, he slid the knife back inside the waistband of his buckskins.

“PI … no … Please!” Amy sobbed.

He didn’t listen.

In one fluid movement he swept Amy from the ground and up into his arms. As she screamed and struggled and pleaded with him, the tall masked chief strode purposefully through the gathering darkness toward the distant wickiup hidden in the trees.

While the drums pounded a savage rhythm and the wild Mescalero braves danced jubilantly around the roaring fires, their lean, bronzed warrior chief in his evil-looking devil’s mask carried his squirming, terrified, pale-skinned beauty to his wickiup and ducked inside.

The flat was lowered. The drums beat faster. The white woman’s screams grew louder. The people looked at each other, laughed, and nodded knowingly.

Their leader, the powerful Chief Snake Tongue, was already beginning to have his fun. And so were they.

H
E STOOD THERE, HIS
black hair blowing back, his face wearing that inscrutable mask that was sheer Indian. Above his high-sculpted cheekbones, his unblinking jet eyes studied her with an almost impersonal intensity.

She could have been a total stranger, for all the emotion he showed—had shown through the long, arduous night. But Amy was not fooled. He was very angry with her. So angry he was rigidly exercising that extraordinary self-control she’d come to recognize. And to detest.

While he stood in a rocklike stance as the first pink light of dawn came from behind him, Amy knew that his tall lean body was tightly coiled with pent-up rage. Despite his adopted air of indifference, she was acutely sensitive to his struggle against the overwhelming desire to seize her and physically punish her.

At another time, under different circumstances, she would have cringed in the face of all that unleashed male rage. Not this morning. No matter his black mood, Amy was so relieved to look on that hard, handsome face she could hardly curb her own desire to reach out and touch the slanted cheekbones, the strong chin, the cruel mouth.

Her clothes in tatters, her long hair tangled, her face dirty and tear-streaked, she stood before the unreachable El Capitán, strangely warmed by his cold eyes, curiously reassured by his barely contained wrath. Nothing he had said or done—nothing he might yet say or do—could alter the fact that he had come for her.