The Pride of Hannah Wade (23 page)

When he reached the ground, he scooped up the two chunks and shook out more bees, then urged Hannah to run before the bees woke up. Lutero followed, yipping cries of success. They were halfway back to the
jacal
before they stopped running.

Lutero gave her the larger piece, all sticky with oozing dark honey. She bit into the waxy comb, the thick, sweet honey running down the sides of her mouth and dripping from the comb, and she cupped her hand, trying to catch it. It was like nectar on her tongue, richly flavored and sweet.

She licked at her fingers to get every drop, making appreciative sounds in her throat.
“Bueno.
Muy
bueno.”

“Is good for you. Good for women,” Lutero informed her. “Honey make woman fertile, so her stomach will grow large with baby.”

Hannah knew that the Apaches had many superstitions centering on pregnancy, but she had not heard this one before. The honey lost some of its flavor. Not because she believed what Lutero said, but simply because she hadn’t considered that she might have his child. For so long, she had wanted Stephen to give her a baby. She felt a sharply bitter pang at the thought that eventually it might be Lutero’s she carried. She put a hand on her stomach, wondering if she had already conceived.

“We begin to make baby,” Lutero stated with certainty. “It takes many times to make all the parts.
Eyanh.”
He urged the honeycomb to her mouth, encouraging her to have more.

She bit into it and slowly chewed on the honey-coated wax, almost letting his superstitions sway her into believing. That was nonsense. But the chance of her becoming pregnant was very real.

The hour call traveled the circuit of the sentry posts around the fort’s perimeter. Stephen Wade listened to the lonely call running through the darkness from inside the Goodsons’ parlor. His stance by the wood stove resembled a parade rest, one arm cocked his back and his feet slightly braced apart. The glass of port in his hand took away some of the stiffness of his pose. His glance strayed to the window, as it had repeatedly during the last twenty minutes . . . ever since he saw the gleam of light shining from a window in his. own quarters across the way.

This morning, Captain Jake Cutter had taken a detail
from A Company on patrol. The colored sergeant who accompanied him had been John T. Hooker. From that, it was easy to deduce that Cimmy Lou had come to see him, as she often did when her husband was away from Fort Bayard.

Damn, but that black wench excited him. He shied away from the erotic images that flashed through his mind. His damned cock would get hard if he didn’t stop thinking about her, Stephen tossed down the rest of his port. When he’d first glimpsed the tight, it had been too soon after the fine dinner the Goodsons had prepared for him to take his leave without breaching social etiquette. But now . . .

“After such a delicious meal and such excellent port”—Stephen lifted his glass to salute Captain Good-son’s taste—“I don’t know how to thank you for inviting me tonight.”

“It was our pleasure,” pretty blond Maude Goodson assured him.

“Have some more port, Major.” The captain reached for the wine bottle to refill his glass.

“No more for me, thank you.” Stephen set the glass on a doily-covered side table. “I am behind in my correspondence, so I hope you won’t think me rude if I tell you that I must retire to my own quarters.”

Protests were made, mostly by Maude, since Captain Goodson deemed it inadvisable to argue with his superior officer. Finally Stephen’s hat, coat, and gloves were fetched and he bid them good night.

When the door had shut behind him, Stephen stepped from beneath the
ramada
and paused to turn his collar up against the night’s winter chill. The sleepy eye of a quarter moon shone on the darkened parade ground. On the other side of the quadrangle, gleams of light came from the black silhouettes of the barracks, the source of the occasional sound of men’s voices drifting on the desert air.

It was a mean post, brutal duty. He’d served his time in these harsh, unsavory conditions. Now there was a chance that it would all change. God, how he wished Hannah was here. After all this time he’d finally been recommended for promotion, and he wanted to share the news with her. There was even a slim possibility he’d be transferred out of the regiment. Custer’s massacre last summer had decimated the ranks of the Seventh Cavalry, and the army was waging a full-scale war against the Sioux, whom Crook called the best light cavalry in the world. Stephen wanted to be part of that campaign against an enemy who could be engaged in battle, instead of fighting these hit-and-run guerrilla tactics of the Apache. It was all happening—slowly— but still it was happening. If only he could find Hannah.

Restlessness pushed at him, all the coiled, driving energies sending him striding across to his quarters where Cimmy Lou waited to ease them. He wondered how he could manage to take her along with him if he was transferred. Now, that would be ideal.

He didn’t regard it as unseemly to think of Hannah and Cimmy Lou at the same time. Gentlemen had always kept mistresses for their personal enjoyment. In Stephen’s mind, Cimmy Lou had no effect on his feelings for Hannah, not lessening his devotion in the slightest.

The minute Stephen entered his quarters he pulled off his hat and gloves, hardly breaking stride as he tossed them on a table and headed down the hall to where the faint light shone, shedding his coat as he went. He opened the door and walked in, then stopped cold.

“Why, Majuh Wade, it’s so good to see you at last,” Cimmy Lou declared in her best imitation of a lady, and sank in a low curtsy.

The metallic gold threads in the gown’s bodice glittered in the lamplight, the brown satin shimmering
and rustling softly as she straightened. Outrage built within him at the sight of that gown—the one Hannah had worn to that last dinner party before the Apaches captured her—on that coffee-colored body.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing in that dress, you damned little slut?! Take it off!” He threw aside the army coat draped over his arm and advanced on the startled girl, too enraged to wait for her to obey. “Dammit, I said take it off!!”

Cimmy Lou took a step backward in alarm, but before she could stop him he grabbed the high bodice and ripped it down the front. Roughly manhandling her, he tore the dress off her, his force sending Cimmy Lou stumbling, wary and half-naked, to one side. Stephen picked up the shredded gown, belatedly noticing its destruction, and clutched it in his hands, desperately holding onto that piece of his wife.

He was slow to hear the scurrying sounds of Cimmy Lou pulling on her plain blue skirt and drab green blouse. The swift tread of her footsteps finally aroused him, and he turned to see her walking to the door, the usual provocative sway of her body stiffened by an angry pride.

“Where are you going?” He frowned in vague confusion.

“I’m leavin’.” She yanked open the door. “Come back here,” he ordered, his frown deepening.

She stopped to glare at him. “You don’t own me, Majuh. I comes here of my own free will an’ I ain’t comin’ no more.”

“Cimmy Lou, wait!” Stephen urged, crossing the room to the door. “I don’t want you to leave yet. Look, if it’s a new dress you want I’ll buy you one.”

“I don’t want nothin’ from you—not anymore.” She slammed out of the bedroom.

Instead of slipping out the back the way she always
did, Cimmy Lou went out the front door. She hugged the blanket shawl tightly around her as she hurried across the parade ground at a trot and headed between the long barracks, taking the shortcut home. The deep shadow between the buildings enveloped her in its blackness, forcing her to slow down.

The sudden appearance of a figure directly in her path momentarily frightened her. Then she recognized the man and her heart started beating again, faster and heavier than before. “Leroy Bitterman, you shouldn’t pop out of the dark like that. I thought you was an Apache,” she muttered angrily, in no mood for him or any man.

“You left the majuh’s kinda early t’night, didn’t ya?”

“Early or late, it ain’t none of yore business.” When she tried to walk by him, he sidestepped to block her path again. “Let me by.”

“You been goin’ there purty regular when yore man’s away. I been watchin’ . . . and wonderin’ what it is you ‘do’ fo’ the majuh in the dark.”

“I thought you was watchin’,” Cimmy Lou retorted sarcastically, and tried to shoulder past him, but he caught her arms and pulled her against his long, lean frame.

“Why don’t you do fo’ me what you been doin’ fo’ him?” His narrow face with its thin mustache moved close to hers.

“You let me go, Leroy Bitterman, else’n I’ll scream,” she warned through bared teeth.

“No, you won’t.” He ground his mouth onto her full lips, the pin-sharp whiskers on his upper lip stinging her skin.

Cimmy Lou twisted her head away from his grating kiss. He grabbed a handful of her hair and tugged harshly on the roots to force her back, but the smarting pain only made Cimmy Lou fight him all the harder, kicking at his legs and curling her fingers to claw at his
face, incensed that he, too, thought she would stand for such rough treatment. He struck her, curing her on the jaw, then hitting her a second time with force.

She stopped fighting suddenly and shut her eyes, offering no resistance when he clamped her face between his hands. “Yore always playin’ with men, first one, then another, an’ ain’t a one of ’em full-blooded enough fo’ you or you’d be with him yet. I can show you what it is yore missin’—an’ it’ll be more than you ever dreamed it could be.” She remained silent and passive, motionless and indifferent to his claims, her eyes closed. “Look at me.” His hands tightened their viselike grip on her face, but she didn’t respond.

Again he kissed her roughly, driving his mouth against her lips, but they stayed slack under his pressure, neither taking nor giving. A groan came from his throat. “Kiss me,” he murmured hoarsely, and tried again, rocking his lips across hers.

The anger and frustration that riddled him pleased Cimmy Lou. She’d show him that she wasn’t to be mastered—not by him or anyone. A run of quiet satisfaction moved through her when the pressure on her lips ended and he leaned his forehead on hers, dropping his hands to her shoulders.

“There ain’t nothin’ there.” His breathing came in hard, laboring gusts, the sound of it heavy like the beat of his pulse. She opened her knowing eyes to study his face, and the lack of peace in it. “Not fo’ me. Not fo’ any man. Yore hollow inside. All there is, is them hips of yores.”

“If you say so,” she mocked him softly, and saw the hot anger come back.

“Yore a she-bitch. That’s what you are—a she-bitch dog. I oughta bend you over that rain barrel and mount you the way the dogs do it.” He released her with a shove that pushed her backward a step. She waited, her lips parted in unconscious anticipation of what he
would do, but he merely looked at her, finally motioning for her to leave. “Git! I don’t want you.”

“Yore a liar, Leroy Bitterman.” Cimmy Lou moved close to him and tilted her head until her face was only inches from his, while she reached down to trail a forefinger up his crotch, unerringly finding his hardened shaft. “You want me.” She slid away from him with a silent laugh and disappeared quickly into the Mack shadows behind him.

On the day they returned to the
rancheria,
Hannah selected a site a discreet distance from Gatita’s wickiup and constructed her own dwelling. She constructed the frame of saplings, in a circle, roughly fifteen feet in diameter, then bent them and tied them together in the center, thatching the space in between the poles with yucca leaves. A tanned hide served as a door flap, and Gatita brought her a fire-scorched canvas that had once covered a settler’s wagon to stretch around the exterior and keep out the winter drafts.

At first Hannah was reserved in the presence of her former mistress, but she soon realized that Gatita felt secure in her role as Lutero’s first wife and confident of his affections. Hannah had witnessed the tenderness of their meeting after the newlyweds returned, Lutero and Gatita standing close together and letting their eyes speak, and knew that she had been a practical choice for a second wife, a means to satisfy his physical needs and provide him with more children.

When an Apache married, he became responsible for his wife’s family. If he acquired a second wife, it was usually a sister of the first so that he wouldn’t have to support two families. Since Hannah was a captive, Lutero had no such obligation to fulfill on her behalf. She was a highly practical choice, and Gatita appeared willing to accept her as a sister and occasional workmate.

In the mornings after Lutero had spent the night in her
jacal,
Hannah sometimes felt awkward and a trifle guilty when she first saw Gatita, but there was too much work to be done for that self-consciousness to last. In addition to her daily chores, she had to make or obtain many of her household items, although a few were given to her as gifts.

When Hannah approached Cactus Pear’s fire to trade some beef she had Jerked for the pottery jugs and cups the young divorcee made, the woman was boiling the juice from some root. Hannah couldn’t identify the plant source and frowned curiously, aware that Cactus Pear was a
di-yin,
a medicine woman possessing power over pregnancies and births.

“What is this you are making?” she asked, after she had given the tattooed woman the beef and sat cross-legged on the ground beside her.

“It is liquid for washing the mother before baby is born.”

“You can help a woman be fertile so that she can have a baby, can’t you?” She remembered hearing that power attributed to Cactus Pear in the past.

“Anh,
yes.”

Hannah watched the liquid bubbling in the clay pot. “What if a woman doesn’t want to have a baby? Can you help her?”

“Anh,
it can be done.”

“How?”

“There is a potion that can be made from certain rock powders.” She couldn’t reveal all of her knowledge or she would lose her power.