The Pride of Hannah Wade (24 page)

“Would you make this potion for me?” Hannah was conscious of the inspection by the
bi-zhahn,
so close that it was nearly an exhibition of curiosity.

“Anh,”
she agreed at last. “I will find the special rocks to make the potion for you.”

“Enju,
it is well.” Hannah straightened fluidly and left the woman’s fire, preferring to trade the Jerked beef for the potion instead of the pottery. She’d seen some of the shamans’ medicines work on the wounded when they had all fled Mexico, She was wiling to try it.

“W
ELL, JOHN T., WHAT DO YOU THINK?
” W
ITHOUT THE
aid of the field glasses, Cutter studied the narrow, twisting trail up the steep side of the canyon to the mesa top. Boulders bigger than horses elbowed into the rocky path, squeezing any approach into single file.

The black hands holding the binoculars directed the magnifying lenses from the bottom of the trail on the canyon floor all the way up to the jagged opening on the top. When the long, slow study was completed, Sergeant John T, Hooker lowered the glasses to look at the area again.

“If those Apaches catch us goin’ up that trail, it’ll be like shootin’ tin cans off a fence rail,” was his sober judgment as he passed the binoculars back to Cutter.

“That’s kinda the way I saw it, too.” Cutter absently thrust the glasses at his lieutenant to be returned to their case as he swung away and angled down the
graveled slope to the shallow gully where the cavalry patrol rested.

His boots started a tiny avalanche of stones, its clatter echoed by the following footsteps of Lieutenant Sotsworth and Sergeant Hooker. Cutter’s blue eyes made a swift study of his dismounted troop, slumped and worn after more than a week away from the fort. Five horses had given out and they had no remounts, which put five of his buffalo soldiers on foot or riding double.

“Do you believe these are the Apaches who stole the agency cattle?” Sotsworth caught up with Cutter and matched his easy, rolling stride as they headed toward the trio of scouts surrounding their recently captured prisoner.

“It would seem likely, Lieutenant.” It was a dry response, accompanied by a look that noted the rivulets of perspiration running down the junior officer’s temple despite the fact that the afternoon temperature was on the cool side. Cutter guessed that his lieutenant’s liquor supply had given out. “John T., picket the horses.” He gave the order to his sergeant. “It’s a dry camp. No smoke—not even a cigarette. Tell the men to get all the rest they can, ‘cause they’re going to need it.

A black hand was waved in a careless salute as the sergeant turned away to direct the setting up of camp. Beside Cutter, Sotsworth frowned at the directive.

“Excuse me, sir, our orders were quite clear regarding the pursuit of—“

“I am well aware of the orders,” Cutter interrupted in a flat voice. “And, Lieutenant, I don’t think even Major Wade would order a charge up that trail in broad daylight.”

“Sir, I wasn’t suggesting—“ Indignant, Sotsworth halted.

Cutter paused, the effects of the long days on the trail
fraying his temper, and settled his glance on the man. “Yes, you were, and I don’t give a damn, Sotsworth. You want to grab onto Wade’s glory and ride out of this regiment with him. That’s fine with me, but just stay out of my way in the meantime.”

A dark flush ruddied Sotsworth’s skin as he lagged a full step behind Cutter. Nah-tay was one of the three Apache scouts guarding the squaw they’d caught. Cutter joined them, his gaze straying from the scout to the Chiricahua woman of indeterminate age. She watched them all with a mixture of sullen distrust and fear. Cutter had no idea what threats Nah-tay had made to force her to disclose the location of the
rancheria,
and figured it was just as well he didn’t.

“Ask her if there’s another way to the top. A trail on the other side.” One that might be easier, less exposed.

The clipped exchange in Apache was accompanied by a persistent shaking of the woman’s head in a negative response. Her high-boned face showed the gauntness of hunger, something her blanket-wrapped, lumpy body concealed. A set of small red lines was tattooed across her forehead, a facial adornment that some bands practiced.

After a lengthy parley, Nah-tay had a simple response. “She say ‘no.’”

“Have two of your nan-tons—your best scouts—-see if they can find another path to the top of that mesa,” Cutter ordered in Spanish, then scraped a smooth place in the sandy soil with the edge of his boot. “And get the woman to show us how everything is laid out up there.”

The cooperation was grudgingly given, each piece of information dragged from the Apache woman, at the threat of what Cutter neither knew nor cared. He didn’t have Nah-tay let up on the interrogation until he was satisfied that there was nothing more of strategic importance to be learned. Hooker joined him in time to hear most of it, crouching beside Cutter and sitting on his
heels to study the rough map drawn with a stick in the gravel.

“I guess this means we’re goin’ up there,” Hooker concluded, and tried to keep any opinion from his voice.

“That’s right.” Cutter used the drawing stick for a pointer. “So far, they don’t know we’re down here. The squaw swears there aren’t any lookouts posted. I’m sure they regard their stronghold as impregnable.”

“Ya mean it isn’t?” Hooker smiled tiredly.

“Nothing is. As soon as it’s dark, we’re going up that trail. Presuming we make it to the top without being discovered, we’ll deploy the men in skirmish lines.” With x’s, he marked the approximate positions in relation to the
rancheria.
“At first light, we’ll attack. According to the woman, there’s only one way up or down that mesa. We’ll have them trapped.”

“Yes, sub—or they’ll have us,” Sergeant Hooker pointed out.

“We’ve been in tough spots before, John T.,” Cutter chided, and caught the slash of an answering grin. They understood one another, and shared a mutual respect. They were about as close as a Negro and a white man could get in these times and this military society. And it never quite occurred to either one of them to want more.

No fires meant no coffee and no hot food. The men drank stale water from their canteens and chewed on dry hardtack. No fires meant no warmth to take the place of the sun buttering the horizon, and the chill crept in to numb the body.

The first stars glittered as a handful of troopers was assigned to stay with the horses and the captured squaw, while the rest formed up to climb the trail under the cover of darkness. A quarter moon came out to watch and shed some of its faint light on the expedition,
making shadows in the blackness of the boulder-strewn path.

The buffalo soldiers practiced the Apache art of stealth and silence, wrapping their boots in burlap sacking to muffle the sound of their footsteps. Nah-tay and his Apache scouts led the way up the trail, mere shadows fitting from rock to rock. Cutter followed them, with John T. about midway back with the men and Sotsworth bringing up the rear.

Tension magnified each sound—the roll of a stone became a resounding clatter—or it altered the pitch, to transform the hoot of a night-hunting owl into the hollow call of an Apache warrior. Winter nights on the desert were chilly, but sweat beaded on black and white skins alike, fear had a way of playing tricks on a man when he didn’t know what was waiting for him in the darkness, when he felt eyes watching him that he couldn’t see. It dried his mouth and tightened his stomach and roughened his breathing. It strained his senses until the pounding of his own heart, the smell of his own body, and the taste of his own sweat drowned out practically everything else.

They reached the top undetected and lay in wait for first light, silent huddles of men, listening, looking, and thinking of the morrow. As soon as there was enough light to see, Cutter gave the signal to attack, beginning with a rush at the first loose cluster of wickiups.

At the first sound of gunfire, disbelief paralyzed Hannah. She stared in the direction of the reverberating explosion, the carnage of the Mexican attack too fresh in her mind. It couldn’t be happening again, when the wounds of the last raid had barely healed and their bellies were only now growing full again!

Lutero ducked into the wickiup and came out with his new Spencer rifle and the repeating Winchester.
Hannah was galvanized into action when Gatita pushed the cradleboard, with Sleepy strapped securely in it, into her arms and shoved her in the opposite direction of the gunfire, A war woman before her pregnancy, Gatita took up the fighting again and went with her husband to cover the flight of their small band.

All around, women and children were scurrying to escape. The trail was the only way Hannah knew off the mesa, and it was blocked by the enemy. Some of the fugitives went that way, obviously hoping to slip behind their attackers. Hannah looked for a place where she and Sleepy could hide until the fighting and killing were over, as they had done the last time.

With the sound of sporadic gunfire in her ears, she ran across the undulating plateau dotted with juniper and scrub oak. A half mile from the
rancheria,
she found a fall of dead timber and crawled, into it, trying to drag the leaf-brittle branches around them.

Long after the shooting stopped, she lay there in a repeat of the nightmare, listening to the rustle of men moving about and completing the mopping-up operations. Distantly she heard voices, but she listened only to judge how close they were, how still she and the infant had to be to escape detection.

The Ghost Face season had colored everything tan and brown. The dead branches and limbs were a many-hued collection of browns and grays. The natural tones of her buckskin clothes let Hannah blend into the earth, and she covered her head and the cradleboard with the charcoal wool of the blanket, breathing in the same air her breath warmed and inhaling the strong earth smells.

The swishing of someone walking through the tall, dead grass around the fall of timber tensed her nerves. Her body hugged tighter to the ground, half-curled in a protective arc around the cradleboard. Hannah cautiously
lifted an edge of the blanket hooding her head and face and managed to peer out with one eye. All she could see was the blue pantlegs of a soldier’s uniform as he moved cautiously through the grass.

Sleepy made a sucking sound as he chewed on his fist. It was a very small sound, but Hannah saw the legs stop and remain motionless. Carefully she let the edge of the blanket down and held her breath, willing the baby into silence. Seconds later, she felt the ground vibrate under the thud of feet approaching the fall of timber, then a brief stillness came.

A branch was lifted aside and something Jabbed at her leg. “Awright, we sees ya.
Vàmanos,
come on outta there,” a voice ordered.

Turning onto her side with an arm resting protectively on the cradleboard, Hannah looked warily into the dark faces of the two Negro soldiers, their rifles aimed directly at her. “Do not shoot. We cannot harm you,” she responded automatically in Spanish, pleading with them not to hurt her or the baby. There was a blankness in her comprehension: she saw the uniforms, but not the U.S. Army insignia; she understood their words, but, didn’t realize what language they were spoken in.

When one of them reached out a hand to touch her, Hannah lifted her arm in a defensive gesture. The blanket slipped, showing more of her face beneath its draping hood.

“Hey, Kirby, she don’t look like no ‘pache to me. Does she to you?” the heavy-lipped soldier queried his buddy, a taller, blacker man.

“She sho’ don’t,” the second man agreed as he bent closer to study a cringing and wary Hannah. Something kept telling her to be afraid of them, not to let them touch her, even as her fear was receding.

“I think we got ourselves one of them
señoritas.
Better go tell the sergeant we found ourselves a Mexican captive,” the first one said, then began crooning to her as his partner hurried back toward the
rancheria,
“We ain’t gonna hurt ya,
senorita.
You jest come along outta there.” His long black fingers with their inner pinkness beckoned to her, urging her to come out.

But it was his voice, the thick southern accent, that began to sink into her consciousness. Frowning, Hannah picked up the cradleboard and scooted slowly free of the timber fall, her eyes watching him. She began noticing details, the Union blue of the uniform, the insignia.

“Sir?” The English word coming from her lips sounded strange, but she went on, a daring hope building inside. “What is your regiment? Is it the Ninth?”

His brows pulled together in a frown of incredulity. “Be you a white woman?”

“Your commanding officer?” She looked toward the
rancheria.
“Where is he? Take me to him. Now.” Her voice grew firmer, an old authority coming through.

“Yes, ma’am.” Stiffly, the proud soldier swung around to escort her to the temporary field headquarters at the overrun Apache camp.

The cigar Cutter had been waiting to smoke all night and morning was between his lips, and he savored the’ taste and feel of it. The wounded were being patched and bandaged by Private Grover. Hooker left him to approach his commanding officer.