The Peacemaker (4 page)

"Sergeant—" she breathed, unable to complete her question. Her tongue felt thick.

"Shh, don't talk. You're safe now. Everything's gonna be all right." He patted her hand reassuringly.

It seemed to Indy that she must be hallucinating. How was it possible that the sergeant had escaped the attack after the second band of Apaches had joined the first? Was he the only one who had survived, or had he and his men somehow managed to fight the Indians off? Questions rolled around inside her head like tumble-weeds, but she couldn't seem to grab hold of one long enough to ask it. She looked up, bewildered.

Moseley tipped his canteen and soaked his neckerchief. "You've got quite a knot on your head, big as a bird's egg," he said, carefully pressing the cloth to the side of her head just above her ear. She yanked back sharply. "Come on now. Easy. This'll take down some of the swelling. You'll probably have a headache for a few days, but all things considered, I'd say you was real lucky. Thought for sure this old wagon was gonna roll." When she started to move around, he slipped a hand beneath her back and raised her up, propping her against her carpetbag.

He offered her the round, canvas-covered canteen, and she drank greedily, swallowing down several large mouthfuls before she actually got a taste of it. It hit her all of a sudden. She made a face and shuddered simultaneously. The water was cool but had a distinctly metallic flavor.

In spite of its repulsive taste or maybe because of it, Indy was suddenly able to think more clearly. She knew she hadn't fainted—she
never
fainted. But obviously she had blacked out for a moment or two. Curious now about the sergeant's description of her injury, she reached up and touched the injured area. He was right. It was the size of a bird's egg, and the way it was throbbing, she thought it might even hatch.

"Hey, Sarge! You got any more water in that canteen?"

Surprised by the voice, Indy grabbed at the sergeant's forearm and pulled herself up onto her side. She saw a small group of soldiers gathered next to a large boulder several yards behind the ambulance. Their images were blurry, but the blue—the wonderful cavalry blue of their fatigue blouses—broke through the blur and she felt a soothing rush of relief.

It was a miracle. Odds had been against any of them surviving and yet here they were. Later, when she had her wits about her, she would have to ask Sergeant Moseley how they had managed to run the Apaches off.

The trooper who had asked about the water detached himself from the group and ran over to the ambulance. "Shatto says the arrow has to come out now, else Cap will bleed to death. What should we do?"

"Shadow." Indy repeated the word in a whisper. Or was it a name? She vaguely remembered the captain mumbling a word that sounded similar. On a sudden thought, she spoke the captain's name and bolted upright.

Moseley caught her by the shoulders, stopping her from going any farther. Over her head he answered the trooper's question. "If
he
says it's gotta come out, it's gotta come out. Shatto knows what he's doin'. Probably better than Doc when it comes to arrow wounds."

Inside Indy's head shades of black, gray, and white whirled, swirled, mixed, and separated like a kaleidoscope. She moaned at the shifting, dizzying patterns. "The captain," she said with an effort, "where is he?" She felt an urgent need to see for herself that he was still alive and if there was something she could do to help him.

Sergeant Moseley pointed to the group of troopers. "He's bein' well taken care of. Ain't nothin' you can do. Shatto's gonna take out the arrow—"

There was that word again.
"Shadow?"
she interrupted. "Did you say shadow?"

Moseley gave a wry smile, lifted his hand, and scratched his beard-stubbled cheek with a dirt-stained finger. "There's times I think he
is
a shadow, the way he shows up all of a sudden like, right there beside you. But no, ma'am. It ain't shadow, it's Shatto," he emphasized the two t's. "And he's a—" At a voice behind him, Moseley glanced over his shoulder, then leaned back on his heels. "Speakin' of shadows . . . ."

It was just like before: the Apache appeared at the back of the ambulance. Only now her fear had a name: Shatto. She would have screamed had she been able to find her voice, but it had become lodged in her throat. She threw herself against the sergeant and held on tight.

Her gaze met with the Apache's and she went breathless with fear.

The dark moments Indy had lost came into her head like the awakening blast of a sunrise reveille. He'd been touching her, her breasts, her stomach, her abdomen, and she'd been too winded, too afraid, and too much in pain to fight him or even make a verbal protest. Then, he'd withdrawn his blood stained hand and raised himself off her. She'd closed her eyes, sucked in great gasps of air, and when she'd opened them again . . . Sergeant Moseley.

It
wasn't
just like before, she realized a second later. Moseley was holding her and telling her there was nothing to worry about. Then, pushing her gently away from him, he said, "The fightin's over, Miss Taylor. Shatto here, he's a friend. He don't mean you no harm. Weren't for him and his friends being out huntin' and comin' on us as they did . . . we'd a had us some serious trouble. As it was we lost three good men."

"Friend?" she echoed, but her mind wasn't able to accept the word.

The Apache looked away from Indy and he spoke to the sergeant in that same guttural language she'd heard before.

Moseley translated. "He says he needs some-thin' for a bandage and figured maybe you'd have somethin' in that carpetbag of yours."

Unable to turn her gaze away from the Apache, Indy spoke out of the corner of her mouth. She was shaking so hard she could hardly form the words. "I don't understand what is going on here. Why would you want to help him? He's one of the Indians who attacked us."

"Yes, ma'am, he's one of them all right, but then again he ain't. Him and his friends have helped us out a time or two the last couple of months. It's been real bad since the colonel come and changed the way—" He stopped abruptly, obviously realizing his error.

Indy didn't have the interest or energy to question him further. "But, Sergeant! You don't understand. He tried to—"

"I know what you was thinkin', ma'am, but he weren't tryin' t'hurt you. He said he saw the blood on your clothes and thought you'd been shot, then he realized it was Cap's blood."

The sergeant's words were finally sinking in and so was the realization that the Apache— Shatto—had saved her life—their lives, she and the captain's—by stopping the runaway team, then by preventing her from using the revolver.

Apparently at the end of his patience, Shatto reached into the ambulance and grabbed for one of the carpetbags.

Indy saw the movement out of the corner of her eye. Impulsively, she reached out and closed her fingers over his forearm before he could carry it off. It was a foolish move, prompted by her natural sense of decency and her guilt, but once the physical contact had been made it virtually paralyzed her. Beneath her fingertips she could feel him tense, feel the sinew and muscle expand and contract, feel the heat of his skin.

Again, their eyes met and locked, but this time it wasn't fear she felt, but something else—some nameless thing, almost painful in its intensity. She blinked and looked up.

It took her a full minute to remember why she had grabbed on to him. Then she rushed to explain, the words tumbling out too politely, coldly. "It seems I misinterpreted your intentions. You deserve my thanks not my condemnation. I'm sorry."

For all the courage it took for her to apologize, it had been a wasted effort. His unflinching stare told her he didn't understand her words. She turned to the sergeant to ask him to interpret, which he did, but there was still no change in the Apache's expression.

She removed her hand from his arm and he took the bag and returned to the captain. It was then that Indy saw the other braves, standing beside their horses, silent and watchful.

All but one of the troopers surrounding the captain moved back, giving Indy a good view. Stripped to the waist, Captain Nolan was propped up against the trooper behind him. He was very much alive and alert. He drank from a small glass bottle and grimaced after each swallow. Finally, he pushed the flask away from him and roared like a lion.

"God Almighty! Which one of you men has the audacity to call this whiskey?" No one confessed. "Ah, never mind. It seems to be working. But if I die real sudden like, it won't be the damn arrow that killed me.   Hear me?" he yelled, then groaned, obviously in great pain. After a moment he turned his gaze on Shatto who was kneeling down in front of him. "I'm ready. Do what you have to do, but do it quick, dammit."

Shatto drew a knife from the leather sheath attached to his cartridge belt and sliced through the arrow shaft, just behind the arrowhead. Nolan clenched his teeth and grunted.

Indy cringed. She had always had a hard time bearing up to other people's pain. Shatto, she noticed, seemed totally unaffected. He was fast and efficient, as if he'd removed a hundred arrows. Maybe he had, she thought. Maybe he was some sort of Apache medicine man.

"You sure you know what you're doing?" queried Nolan, looking up skeptically at the Apache.

If Shatto answered, Indy didn't hear him. He got up and moved around to Nolan's back and hunkered down.

"Don't move, Captain," cautioned one of the other troopers. "Don't even breathe."

"Will you hurry up?" Nolan grated out.

The words were hardly out of his mouth when Shatto grabbed hold of the feathered end of the shaft and pulled straight toward him.

The captain cursed at the top of his lungs, then fell forward, unconscious. The remainder of the whiskey was now used to pour over the front and back of the wound, then his shoulder and upper chest were bandaged with strips torn from one of Indy's petticoats.

Finished now, Shatto moved back and watched as the troopers mustered to pick up their captain and ease him into the ambulance and place him on the long bench.

Minutes later, everyone was in position: a new man in the driver's seat, Sergeant Moseley sitting next to Indy watching over her and the captain, and the remaining troopers mounted and ready to go. Moseley lowered the canvas curtains and gave the order for the ambulance to start forward.

Indy glanced back and saw the Apache vault up onto his pinto. He sat his horse with an arrogant, loose-limbed casualness that said he was a man who knew he had complete control, over his mount and everything else. His proud, handsome face wore an expression of supreme confidence—a confidence that manifested itself in every gesture he made.

Was he an Apache chieftain? she wondered. She had read a little of Cochise, and one or two others, but the name Shatto had never come up in any of the reports. Perhaps he was a newly appointed chieftain, having stepped into the position as the result of another's death.

Even as the ambulance moved forward, she stared at him. There was something about him . . . something that set him apart from the others.

It was that
something
—that difference—that had sparked her awareness of him. She wondered if their paths would ever cross again, and she wondered why she was curious about such a thing.

She stared after him even after the ambulance had rounded a curve and she could no longer see him. "How much longer will it take to get to Bowie?" she asked Moseley.

"We'll be there in no time, ma'am. No time at all."

Camp Bowie sat on a plateau at the base of a domed mountain overlooking Apache Pass. A clear sky and a full rising moon held back the dark of night. From inside the curtained ambulance Indy looked uninterestedly between buildings at the raw, crudely constructed post that would be her home for the next few months. A dozen or more buildings built of wood and adobe made a broken square around the parade ground, which by day, when the regimental flag waved, would become the center of activity.

The events of the last hours had left her body numb, her spirit languishing and her clothing and hair disheveled. In her present condition, even if Bowie's streets had been paved in gold, she would have thought them ugly. In fact, Bowie had no streets, no grass, no trees for shade or any amenities as far as she could tell. It was by far the most primitive, uncivilized-looking post she had ever seen, and she had seen a good many of them, all east of the Mississippi, she reminded herself, which may have had something to do with it, but didn't give her any comfort.

The bugler blew the 8:30 P.M. tattoo as the ambulance creaked and rattled between two adobe structures. In half an hour he would blow taps and the day would officially be over. Turning right, and entering the far northwest corner of the parade ground, the driver pulled up beside a large, flat-roofed, L-shaped adobe. Soft yellow light spilled from the windows onto the team, glancing off the metal rings on their rigging.

Soldiers who had been heading for their quarters started running toward the returning detachment. Of the eight men sent out, five had survived the attack. The dead—the ambulance driver, and three others were being towed behind the troopers, tied facedown to the horses' saddles.

The tranquility of the evening erupted into chaos as word of the detachment's return passed like wildfire from mouth to mouth. In less time than it took to brake the team, word had spread into the barracks and officers' quarters.

Inside the curtained ambulance, Indy sat quietly in the right front corner, behind the driver's seat, trying to keep her eyes open and her mind alert for what she knew was coming. She heard variations of excitement, concern, and fear—the latter from the women.

In a minute or two she would have to abandon the ambulance. She trembled at the thought of having to present herself to so many people at once, especially in her present condition. Besides her dishabille, and a bruising headache, she had yet to recover from the fear of the attack. She wondered if she ever would.

"Stand back, now. Out of the way," ordered Sergeant Moseley in a tone that brooked no argument, not even from the commissioned officers. He waved his hand to move the people away from the back of the ambulance, then opened the drop gate. "Somebody get Doc and tell him he's got a couple of patients." On an afterthought he shouted, "And get Colonel Taylor."