The Pride of Hannah Wade (22 page)

“My husband spoke and told me his wishes,” Gatita announced with formal dignity. It was a curious statement, but Hannah said nothing. If she was to know what it meant, she would be told. That much, too, she had learned. “He seeks to marry with you. I have no unmarried sisters who would have this right first. You are my property, so he comes to me.” Shock deprived Hannah of her voice. “He brought food and you cooked it. That is a sign you willing to be his woman.
You work hard and you learn good the way of the Apache. You gave back the life of my son. I agree with the man who is my husband that you become his second wife and stepmother to the sleepy one.”

Hannah didn’t bother to explain that she hadn’t understood the significance of the rabbit. “But I have a husband.”

“He is a
pindah,
white-eye.” which dismissed him completely in Apache logic.

“If it is not my wish to marry with him?” She wondered how much choice she had in this.

“Then you are a
tonto,
a fool.” Even the suggestion of it had reduced Hannah in Gatita’s estimation. “Why should you wish to be treated like a dog, eating scraps and sleeping outside in the cold and the rain?”

“What you say is true,” Hannah admitted cautiously. “I will think on this.” ‘

After Gatita had left her, Hannah made slow work of grinding the com into meal for tortillas. The proposal of marriage was an honor, she realized, and signaled her acceptance into the tribe. A refusal by her was likely to be regarded as an insult. They were a proud people.

She paused in her work, aware of the heavy pressures grinding on her. The reality of her situation had to be faced. She had survived this long by adapting. She didn’t know exactly how many days or months she’d been with the Apaches, nor how many more days and months would go by before she would be free ... if she ever would be. The doubt finally crept in.

Yet how could she quit now? It would mean that she had gone through all this in vain. She couldn’t do that. While she was still alive, there was always a chance. Marriage to Lutero would drastically improve her living conditions, and refusal could deny her the few comforts she presently had. On one hand, it seemed unthinkable
to marry the man who had so brutally raped her eight or nine months ago; but on the other hand, it was imminently practical.

Perhaps it was strange, but Hannah could separate in her mind the woman she had been from the woman she had become. And the same with Lutero. At the time of the rape, they had been two enemies separated by their hates and fears. In these last weeks since the Mexican tragedy, they had worked together for the band’s common good. While she could never forgive nor forget what he’d done to her, she couldn’t hate him with the same ferocity she once had.

When she was finished with her task, Hannah collected the basket of ground meal and the parfleche in which the dried kernels were stored and carried them to the
jacal.
Gatita was working outside, weaving a basket, a
tuts-ah,
of willow and devil’s claw. At Hannah’s approach, she looked up. Their glances locked for a long minute; then Hannah slowly nodded.

“Enju,
it is well,” Gatita said, and went back to her

As was custom, the marriage ceremony was arranged to take place within two days after Hannah had agreed to the proposal. A feast followed the Apache rites of marriage. Hannah sat composedly through the celebration, stiffly aware of the man at her side and the fragrance of her skin, rubbed with the crushed leaves of the wild mint.

At the appropriate time, two horses were brought to them. While Lutero held the nose of the tan-and-white-spotted horse, Hannah sprang onto its back and waited for him to mount the dappled buckskin. A heightened tension tightened her stomach. She had spoken little to Lutero during the festivities, and now they were going off alone, away from the
rancheria
and the watching eyes, to become accustomed to each other. Hannah was not sure if she was grateful for that.

However, certain things were done to survive. She had to regard them in that light to preserve her sanity, had to put them in appropriate compartments in her mind and then close them off. When she rode out of the camp with Lutero, she had no sense of infidelity; she was trying to stay alive in order to get back to Stephen. It wasn’t Hannah Wade who had married Lutero, but Coloradas, the name she’d been given for the red in her hair. These things were separate. They had to be.

U
PON LEAVING THE MANCHEEM ATOP THE MBSA STRONG-
hold, they traveled roughly three miles to a small box canyon. Lutero led her to a
jacal,
half-concealed by the scrub Juniper and pine crowding the north side of the canyon, floor. While Lutero staked the horses out to graze on the winter-brown grass, Hannah explored the newly built honeymoon retreat, stocked with several days’ supply of food, utensils for cooking, and a bed frame covered with blankets.

Lutero ducked through the low opening to loom before her. “It is as you wish?”

She managed to stand her ground and not back away from him in an instinctive recoil, sensing his attempt to please.
“Enju.”
She indicated her approval.

“I will start a fire.” He moved past her to the center of the bower, where firewood and kindling were laid in preparation.

The winter sun left the sky early. Outside, shadows
were already lengthening in the late afternoon. They had brought food with them, so Hannah didn’t have to fix a meal that night. She began, unpacking it while Lutero used a fire drill, twirling it in his hands to ignite the grass and bark shreds around the small hole in the foot-long sotol stick. It was a slow, tedious process. On occasion, Hannah had seen the Apaches use flint boxes to start fires, but she had learned that they seldom relied on the white man’s devices.

When the flame was burning strongly, Hannah passed him the food she’d set out and they ate, a weighty silence between them. Several times she felt his eyes on her as she chewed on the tough agency beef, but she never caught him looking at her. She guessed that he watched her covertly, as she did him.

The sky above the smoke hole in the thatched roof had a purple hue and the flickering pool of light cast by the small fire played across the bronze planes of Lutero’s face. His hair hung black and straight from the blue calico band around his head, the blunt ends brushing the fringed shoulder seams of his buckskin shirt. Hannah felt tautness running through her nerves and rejection growing in her stomach for the food she was putting there. She put aside the rest of her portion.

“You do not eat,” Lutero observed.

“My stomach is filled. I can eat no more.” She wiped her greasy hands on the sides of her tanned leather skirt.

“Enju.
I cannot eat anymore.” The suggestion of a smile gentled his bluntly carved features, but Hannah didn’t acknowledge it. She was too stiff with a dread that had to be controlled. He waited, motionless by the fire, while she stored away the uneaten food; then he rolled to his feet in one lithe motion, swinging a blanket around his shoulders. “I will check the horses before we sleep. You will come.”

Her hesitation was slight; then she followed him
through the opening as he held the skin flap aside for her. The deep purple of night had settled over the canyon, masking their surroundings in black shadows. Her footsteps were almost as noiseless as his as they walked to the small clearing to check the horses.

“The moon rises.” The tilt of his head directed Hannah’s gaze to the gleaming white crescent above the black horizon.

“It looks cold.”

“It is cold.” Lutero raised a blanket-draped arm and started to put it around her shoulders to bring her inside its warm protection. Hannah instinctively flinched at his touch, and he drew back. “Do you have fear of me?”

“No.” She could honestly say that she wasn’t afraid of him.

“Then come where it is warm.” The end of the blanket was again raised, while he waited with calm patience for her to join him inside its cloak. Steeling herself to impassivity, she moved within the open curve of the blanket and felt the outline of his hard, muscled body all down her side. She remained detached from the contact as she listened to the munch of the horses, barely discernible pale shapes against the darker shadows of the trees.

Absently, Hannah realized she was probably no different from many women who married to have a roof over their heads and food on their tables—and endured the touch of their husbands because there was nothing else they could do. For the first time, she saw the injustice of it. But it was ingrained from childhood that they needed men, that without them they were less than women. She found herself objecting to the subjugated role she had always played. It was a new thought and one to ponder.

“It grows late,” Lutero stated, his head turned toward her.

Hannah stirred, roused from her wonderings; yet she maintained her stoic indifference. She held her end of the blanket, ignoring the feel of his hand on her waist and the rub of his hip against hers as they walked back to the secluded
jacal.

Inside the structure, the low-burning fire threw little light to ward off the encroaching shadows. Under the cover of the darkness, Lutero pulled the buckskin shirt over his head, and she caught the glistening sheen of his muscled chest. She turned her back to him and began undressing.

For one instant, just before she slipped beneath the blankets where Lutero lay, she let herself remember that other time when her body had been blistered and raw. She tried to school herself to feel nothing when his hands moved onto her. She sank her teeth into her lip to silence her automatic protest, relieved that Apaches regarded the practice of mouths touching as revolting. Hannah stared up at the twinkling of stars through the wispy trail of smoke rising through the roof’s hole, and disassociated herself from the things that were happening to her.

In a wholly abstract way, she was conscious that his hands were not rough with her but caressing. She was not rigid under his touch, but neither was she responsive. When he levered himself on top of her and moved between her legs, a hot rage seethed through her and she shifted under his pinning weight, resisting the jabbing probe of his male-head. He stopped, his hand gliding down to rub her mound and stimulate the flow of female juices until she was moist and ready for his entry. And Hannah discovered that the body was capable of accepting what the mind rejected. Even though she received no satisfaction and little pleasure, the coupling was not the objectionable act she had expected. There had obviously been a healing of the mind as well
as of the body. Here was one more thing she could endure.

During the next five days, they spent nearly every minute together. Sometimes they worked at separate tasks doing camp chores, and other times they walked, but never venturing outside the confines of the box canyon. Lutero talked, mostly recounting details of successful raids when he’d outwitted the stupid
pindahs
or telling amusing stories about this or that person. Sometimes Hannah listened, but mostly she feigned attention, smiling and nodding at the appropriate times.

“Mañana,
ugashé’
As always, their conversation was a mixture of Spanish and Apache as Lutero informed her that they would be leaving this place the following day. Hannah wasn’t sorry. While it would be crude and totally unfeeling to say she only tolerated him—there were moments when his company was actually pleasant—she longed for time to be by herself.

“It is time, I think.” She nodded, and glimpsed the flash of blue as a jay took flight from the tree just ahead.

“Do you wish for your own house?”

“No comprendo.”
Hannah didn’t understand why he asked the question.

“Do you wish to live in house with first wife or do you wish to be separate?”

“Separate,” she was quick to answer.

“Anh,
yes.” He smiled knowingly. “Two wives seldom happy under same roof—even sisters. Fight.”

“Anh.
” After putting up and taking down so many wickiups as the band constantly moved to new sites to hunt and forage, it would be a novelty to erect her own when they returned to the
rancheria.

“Look.” Excitement was in his voice as he pointed to something high on the canyon face.

Hannah scanned the sheer rock, but her eyes were not as keen as Lutero’s. “What is it that you see?”

“Bees make hive where think we cannot reach to steal their honey.” His confident expression indicated differently, but when Hannah spotted the dark comb, she wasn’t convinced. “You wait. I get.”

In disbelief, she watched him move to the base of the canyon wall where it rose almost perpendicular to the ground and begin his climb, finding hand and toe-holds in the smooth ledges of the layered rock where none appeared to exist. It was an exhibition of agility and strength, partly to impress her with his skill and daring, and partly to satisfy his boyish sweet tooth with honey.

Higher and higher he went. Hannah’s head was tipped back as far as it would go to keep him in sight. When he was almost within reach of it, Lutero stopped and snapped a dead branch off the twisted trunk of a tree. At any other time of year, the bees would have swarmed from the hive and attacked, but now, heavy with winter, they slept. Still, Hannah held her breath as he pried at the encrusted nest. Two large chunks of it broke off and careened off the canyon face, falling to the ground not far from her. Sluggish, disoriented bees crawled from the broken honeycombs, keeping Hannah at a distance while Lutero descended.