The Pride of Hannah Wade (18 page)

They took a long time, covering every inch of his body with the splinters, turning him into a walking porcupine. He writhed in agony. Then Hannah saw Gray Dove carry a flaming stick of wood from one of the campfires and touch it to the splinters. She screamed and tried violently to wrench herself from Lutero’s hold.

The boy’s full-throated shriek of horror spiraled above hers as the flames enveloped him within seconds, racing through the dried bits of wood like tinder. Before Hannah shut her eyes, a living ball of fire rolling on the ground was the last thing she saw. Lutero let go of her and she stumbled away, the stench of burning flesh filling her nostrils, the smell lingering long after his screams ceased to echo through the night. She vomited, emptying her stomach until only bile was left, and most of that came up, too.

She moved blindly with no thought of a destination and eventually sank to the ground with no idea of the place. For a long time, she sat with her knees bent and her forehead resting on them, while the tears dried on
her face. She felt completely blank; everything was a void.

Once she had been so proud of her milk-white skin; now it was the color and texture of the buckskin of her clothes. And her hands had been so soft and smooth; now calluses gave them the roughness of sandpaper. No more afternoon teas with watercress and cucumber sandwiches; she was grateful for a drink of water and a chunk of
zigosti,
bread.

Why did she still want to live? Why, when maybe she would die like that later on?

“Vámonos,
come,” Gatita ordered.

“No.” Hannah stated her rebellion quite simply. She saw no reason to live in subjugation any longer. When she lifted her head, she met Gatita’s glare with equanimity. “How can you kill a man like that? How can a woman kill a man like that?” she demanded.

Gatita stretched to attain every imperious inch of her five-foot height and looked down on her seated slave. During a long pause she studied Hannah’s upturned face, then rested a protective hand on the top curve of her stomach. Maneuvering her bulk with care, she lowered herself to the ground, kneeling and then sitting back on her heels.

“It is way of Apache.”

“To set people on fire? To burn them alive? No one deserves to die like that. It is the way of animals!” Hannah retorted.

“Look there.” Gatita motioned toward the barren, inhospitable reaches of the desert spilling out before them. “Desert kills like that, lakes man’s power piece at a time. Slow die. Power leave—slow.”

“That’s crazy.” Irritated, Hannah grabbed up a handful of sand and shook it inside her closed fist.

“No crazy. This Apache land. Take lot of power to live here. When white-eyes kill Knife-Open-Cheek, take power from Gray Dove. She must avenge and take
power back. Man lets go of it piece at a time. Longer he take to die. more pieces Gray Dove have. It is way of Apache.”

“Could you kill like that, Gatita?” Hannah looked at the proud woman with a long sideways glance.

“Anh,
yes.”

“Women and children?”

“Women and children have no power. Man has power.”

A throaty sound that was almost a laugh bubbled from Hannah. “That’s some consolation, I guess,” she said in English. “We may not have any power, but at least we don’t have to die like that.” Gatita gave her a puzzled and wary look, not following any of it. Hannah’s bitter amusement faded to a dry smile. “Maybe the desert is cruel. Maybe man is cruel. We are the earth. I just don’t know any more.”

“Mañana, ugashé,
tomorrow we go,” Gatita stated. “This place smell of
dah-eh-sah,
death.”

“Anh,”
Hannah replied in Apache, agreeing with the Indian woman.

It was the time called Thick with Fruit. The
rancheria’s
wickiups were erected amid towering sagua-ro cacti to harvest its fruit and preserve it. But none of Gatita’s female relatives were out among the giant cacti. They were gathered at her wickiup, including her mother, Salt Lips, and a
di-yin,
a medicine woman skilled in midwifery. Observing the tribal taboo-where his mother-in-law was, he wasn’t—Lutero absented himself from the event.

Lifting aside the blanket flap over the low, traditionally east-facing door of the wickiup, Hannah carried in the water warmed over the campfire. Gatita knelt on an old blanket and held onto an upright post to brace herself during the contractions. Apache women did not give birth lying down, Hannah had been informed. The
di-yin,
a tall, stately, gray-haired woman, had given Gatita four salted pieces of the inner leaves of the yucca, a medicine that would make the birthing fast and easy. While the
di-yin
rubbed the extended abdomen, a solution made from a root powder was used to bathe Gatita’s genitals.

Hannah passed the water to Gatita’s mother, then hugged close to the rounded side of the wickiup, wanting to be present when the baby was born. Minutes later, a flurry of excited murmurs announced its advent as the head emerged to be cradled in the palm of the
di-yin’s
hand. An exhausted and sweating Gatita was smiling, her head thrown back, arching her throat for that last effort.

“Ish-ke-ne.”

“Ish-ke-ne.”

It was a boy-child; the happy words were repeated and spread as the newborn infant was gently drawn away from his mother. Hannah saw that the baby hadn’t begun breathing on its own and waited for the customary slap. Instead, the
di-yin
splashed cold water on the infant. After one tiny startled gasp, he breathed on his own but didn’t cry. There were approving nods all around the wickiup.

The
di-yin
called for the warm water Hannah had brought and began the ritual washing of the baby, followed by the sprinkling of the
ha-dintin
pollen to the four directions and on the baby and then the offering of the proper prayers. Gatita’s mother and sisters administered to her, bathing her and making sure all was normal.

Finally the blanket-wrapped baby was handed to his mother for his first meal. His mouth was open and blindly searching, and a small red-brown fist waved in the air. Then, as if it all became too much for him, he yawned widely.

Gatita laughed tiredly.
“Go-yath-khla.”
Everyone
seemed to agree; only Hannah was confused. Gatita noticed that as she guided the milk-wet teat to her son’s mouth. “I call him Sleepy,” she explained in Spanish.

An appropriate name. For the first week, that seemed to he all he did.

A rosy yellow was tinting the sky on the eastern horizon, a fingering light softly stealing into the desert chaparral to show the breaks in the mesquite, palo verde, and creosote bushes. Soon the night shadows would lift and they would be able to see clearly with dawn’s blush on the land.

Stephen stood in the stirrups, feeling the stretch of his leg muscles, and looked over his shoulder at the column of men. Their faces were haggard from the night’s forced march; they had traveled better than twenty-five miles under the cover of dark. But he was satisfied to see a tension in their expressions, the nerves tightening the way they always do just before the enemy is engaged. Combined with the solid, sure feeling that steadied him, it became a smooth exhilaration, a readiness that made the blood flow and the heart pump strongly.

But he bridled his impatience for the time being. Stephen could-feel the tiredness of his horse after the all-night trek. The light wasn’t quite right and the horses could use the extra few minutes’ rest. He curbed his own energies and waited.

The buckskin horse Amos Hill was riding soft-footed over to the tall chestnut that was Stephen’s personal mount. Amos came up on the side of his good eye and eased himself into a better position on the horned saddle.

“Do they know we’re out here yet?” Stephen asked, sotto voce.

“Ain’t got a whiff,” Amos assured him in a mumbled
whisper, and looked at the spreading color in the sky. “Be light enough soon.”

“Yes.” Too much energy was contained in him for Stephen to remain still. He swiveled partially in the McClellan to take another look at the men behind him and make certain they were ready to move out at his signal. On his right, he noticed Cutter rubbing a hand across his jaw and cheek, the beard stubble making a scraping sound.

“Need a shave,” Cutter murmured. He lowered his hand to a uniform-covered thigh with its yellow stripe. “How many should we expect, Amos?”

“Nah-tay thinks most of the men are away—hunting or raiding. Not many horses. Figure maybe ten, fifteen men. The rest are women and children, maybe thirty or so.”

Stephen measured the sky’s light with another look. “Let’s move up.”

The signal was given to move forward at a walk. All sound was subdued—the sand-muffled plod of hooves, the small moans of leather, the muted chomping of bridle bits, and the hush of silent men, faces somber and eyes alert. The last quarter mile to the
rancheria’s
eastern extremity was a long one. Nah-tay and a dozen of his
nan-tans,
best scouts, waited for them.

There was a stir of movement around the
jacals,
of women adding fresh fuel to the smoldering fires, dogs stretching and wagging their tails at the children wandering out of the brush-covered huts, and men hunching over the rekindled fires. Then the early-morning quiet was shattered by the thundering charge of the blue-suited cavalry.

The ensuing chaos was a harsh blend of shouts and screams and sporadic bursts of gunfire. The Apache men along with two war women leaped for their weapons, while the rest of the adult females tried to get
the chicken to safety. It was a stampede of animals and people, in a dozen directions, women and children fleeing, soldiers chasing, and warriors trying to cover the retreat of their families. The smells of sweat, blood, and panic mixed with the sharp-scented dust and wood-smoke in the air.

The fury of the clash was expended within minutes as the troop overran the
rancheria
and captured all who didn’t make it away in the first dash. Five Apaches were killed in the battle, including one woman, and seventeen were taken prisoner, while the company suffered only two casualties, both relatively minor. A detail was dispatched to comb the area for fleeing stragglers, the search patrol composed mainly of Apache scouts and a handful of troopers.

The rest of the troopers remained at the
rancheria,
where they rounded up their prisoners and herded them into one of the stick corrals, constructed out of ocotillos. Stephen’s long-striding chestnut swept back toward the center area of the
rancheria,
the war-horse’s neck arched in excitement from the smell of blood, its reaching trot giving the horse and rider the appearance of gliding across the ground. Stephen reined the prancing horse to a jiggling stop by one of the smoking fires. Cutter rode over. “Get that fire going,” Stephen said. “I want these wickiups burned to the ground. Their weapons, food, supplies-everything destroyed.”

The intent was simple: deprive the Apache of food, shelter, and weapons, and thus force him to seek the reservation. It was brutal, but effective.

“Ser-geant!” Cutter summoned Sergeant John T. Hooker as he rode by, and passed along a briefer version of the directive. ‘Torch them.”

“Yes, suh.” Hooker threw a salute as he hauled his horse into a turn and yelled to a private, the order finally getting to the bottom rank.

Jake Cutter kicked his horse into motion after the
high-striding chestnut, following Wade to the corral where the captives were being held, One-Eye Amos Hill swung out of his saddle and waited by the thorny sticked fence at their approach. The chestnut slowed to a reluctant stop, tossing its head and chewing noisily on the bit Between snorts, wade sat the constantly shifting horse and surveyed the sullen and silent Apache prisoners. A couple of toddlers made the only sounds with their muffled sobs of bewilderment. From the side, Cutter watched him. It was a scene he’d seen played out many times before.

“Open the gate.” The command was given calmly as Wade twitched his horse to one side.

Amos Hill motioned to the Apache scout inside, and the crossbar was let down. Knowing its role, the high-bred chestnut settled down immediately and entered the enclosure with parade poise. While Wade slowly walked his horse around the prisoners, stopping to visually inspect each one, Cutter reached inside his pocket for a cigar and lit it. After a long abstinence, the cigar smoke made a pleasing sting on his tongue.

Amos scuffed the toe of his boot into the ground, glancing up briefly in the general direction of their commanding officer, “Kinda makes me wonder what he’d do if he ever found one of ’em wearin’ somethin’ of his wife’s.”

“The odds are against it.” Cutter continued to watch with a noncommittal expression.

“He was over checkin’ the dead ones almost before the flies landed on ’em.” Behind them, the first torch was set to a brush-thatched wickiup. After an exploratory crackle, the flames whooshed over the hut. “He’s persistent as hell, I’ll give him that.” Amos squinted his good eye against the sun’s low angle of light. “Ya know, some authorities claim there’s twenty-five thousand Apache out here. I bet there’s less than ten thousand, an’ probably only a third of ’em is males of fightin’age.”

“You could be right.” Cutter absently flexed the tired muscles in his shoulders, catching the smell of gun-smoke on his clothes. “Hey, John T.,” he called to the colored sergeant. “As long as we’ve got all these fires going, tell somebody to throw some coffee on one of them.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wade rode behind the huddled group of Apache captives one last time, and headed for the corral’s opening. The big chestnut swung outside it and responded to the curb by prancing sideways, snorting at the blazing native huts aflame all around.

Wade looked directly at the scout. “You know what to ask.” He didn’t wait for a response, easing the restraining pressure to send his mount forward.

“Yeah, I guess I do,” Amos said to the major’s back as he rode away, then gave a small shake of his head. “D’ya really think he expects to find her after all this time? What was the last tally—d’ya remember, Cutter? Wasn’t it two Mexican señoritas and one yellow-haired boy he’s bought off the ‘pache?”