The Pride of Hannah Wade (3 page)

“Grover!” Sergeant John T. Hooker called to one of the troopers, a strapping, ebony-rimmed man named Angst Grover who was a six-year veteran with the Ninth.

“Yo!” he responded to the summons, and moved quickly toward his sergeant.

“Get some water from the well for these mules,” Hooker ordered.

As the trooper drew abreast of Cutter, the trader pushed his chest out and adopted a surly stance. “You’re welcome to water your animals, but I ain’t got none to spare for them niggers of yours.” A victim of prejudice himself, Apache Jack was still quick to turn the tables and look down on those he considered inferior.

Neither Private Grover nor Sergeant Hooker blinked an eye at the discriminatory remark. They were used to such bigotry, encountering it wherever they were stationed. A and C companies of the Ninth Cavalry Regiment had been assigned to Fort Bayard in southwestern New Mexico to provide protection for the miners and settlers around Silver City, but few were keen to be protected by colored soldiers—and they made no secret of their feelings.

Jake Cutter was a man slow to rile, but when pushed, he shoved back hard. “What’s the matter, Reynolds? Do you think he might contarminate your water? Maybe you’re afraid the black rubs off? Well, it doesn’t!” He
reached out and roughly wiped his hand across the trooper’s sweat-shiny ebony cheek, then held it palm up toward the trader. “See,” he challenged. “But don’t worry. We won’t drink your damned water.”

Apache Jack Reynolds backed away from Cutter, wary of that cold temper. He looked over his shoulder as the women filed into his store. “Best see if I can help the ladies,” he muttered, and left quickly.

Through it all, Grover had stood silently next to Cutter, his sergeant on his other side. As his rancor eased to a grim tolerance, Cutter glanced at the colored soldier. A flare of pride and deep resentment was in the answering looks of both men.

Cutter released a heavy breath. “Wiping your face like that embarrassed you, didn’t it, trooper?” he guessed.

“Yes, suh.” It was confirmed with defiant stiffness.

“I was trying to make a point—“ Cutter began, then stopped and gave a small shake of his head.

“Water the mules, Grover,” Sergeant Hooker inserted quietly, dismissing the soldier.

Cutter watched him walk away. When he spoke again, there was a hard edge to his voice. “I’m tired of hate, John T.” He dropped the military formality. “I’m tired of Rebs hating Yanks, whites hating blacks, white men hating red men. Such unreasoning hatred . . . it makes no sense. It’s like hating the desert because there’s no water in it.”

“Yes, suh,” was the noncommittal response.

Across the clearing Cutter saw Mrs. Wade pause in the doorway of the store and look back in a questioning manner. He touched his fingers to the brim of his hat and feigned a slight bow, assuring her all was well.

L
ESS THAN AN HOUI LATER,
H
ANNAH FELT THE SIBBLY
strength of Cutter’s gauntleted hand as he assisted her aboard the army ambulance and waited while she arranged her skirts to sit on the seat. When she was comfortably settled with Mrs. Bettendorf and Mrs. Sloane, he walked to the back of the wagon and untied his horse. She watched him swing onto his McClellan saddle and wished, for an instant, that she had ridden her blooded thoroughbred. Army ambulances did not provide the gentlest of rides.

“Do you ride, Mrs. Sloane?” she inquired with interest.

“I have,” came the hesitant response from the young wife.

“I ride almost daily. There are some lovely trails close to the fort. You must have your husband find a gentle mount for you, and we’ll ride together some morning,” Hannah urged.

“Mrs. Wade is a most accomplished horsewoman,”

Mrs. Bettendorf volunteered in endorsement of Hannah’s skill, although she herself had long since given up the pleasures of the sidesaddle for something a little more settled. “Naturally the colonel insists she never leave the fort unescorted, for her own protection.”

“I don’t let that stop me.” Hannah’s voice had a carefree, lilting sound to it. “Even when Stephen is on duty, there is never a lack of officers to ride with. An escort can always be arranged.”

“I’ll mention it to Dickie—Richard.” Mrs. Sloane hastily corrected her usage of the familiar nickname.

The scrape of the brake being released was followed by the jangle of harness and bridle bits. Hannah gripped the seat for balance as the mules lunged into their collars. The wheels rattled over the stony ground, rolling and gathering momentum to sweep the wagon along.

The track led into the mountain-wrinkled desert and took a northerly course toward Fort Bayard, which lay at the foot of the Pinos Altos Mountains. The two troopers deployed to their respective positions, one ranging in advance of the ambulance to ride point and the other lagging to the rear to ride drag. On the right, the side opposite the drifting dust of the wheels, Captain Cutter sat astride his drab brown horse, rocking in an easy canter.

Hannah’s attention lingered on him, noting his tight seat in the saddle. That was the army way, which she had learned from Stephen. No longer could she be ridiculed for “rising” when her horse trotted; her seat in the sidesaddle was firm and secure. This winter Stephen had been so pleased with her progress that he’d even begun letting her jump the cavalry hurdles and ditches. She was becoming quite good.

Idly she studied Jake Cutter’s long-bodied form, muscled and erect. He did not dance attendance on the
young women living on Officers’ Row, as most of the bachelor officers did. Any attention he tendered was usually obligatory, such as this escort
duty;
the colonel had given him the assignment even though there were probably any number of volunteers for the task.

Conscious of his alertness, the restless sweep of his gaze along their path, Hannah found herself searching the brush and gullies for any glimpse of a hiding Apache, The winter had been relatively quiet, but many officers—her husband among them—expected the raiding to begin with the onset of spring.

Fort Bayard in the New Mexico Territory sat at the end of the rough and dusty ride. The frontier outpost was strategically situated where the desert and mountains met. To the south, the land prickled with cactus and thorny trees all the way to the Rio Grande and Mexico, and to the north lay the awesome canyon country of the Gila River area.

Outside the fort’s perimeter there was a small encampment where the Apache scouts lived with their families. The head of the scouts, a white man named Amos Hill, lived there as well with his Apache squaw. As they passed, Hannah recognized her working outside the brush-covered
jacal,
her face whitened with rice powder.

They passed the guardhouse post, entering the fort. No outer wall protected the collection of military buildings that surrounded the parade ground. There was no stockade behind which the soldiers could hide. Their only protection at this fort was their own vigilance—and their guns. It resembled a small town with its barracks, barns, shops, and supply stores, its military “upper-crust” housing along Officers’ Row, and the limited housing for the families of enlisted men on Suds Row, so named because the wives took in laundry to supplement their husbands’ army pay.

The ambulance rolled down Officers’ Row, with its
collection of squat, crudely built multifamily dwellings of adobe brick. Chimneys, constructed of the same mud-and-straw brick, poked from the tops of the brush-covered roofs.
Ramadas
jutted from the fronts of the structures, providing shade and a frontier-style galleried porch that faced the parade ground. When the ambulance stopped in front of one of the buildings, Captain Cutter dismounted to assist the ladies down from the wagon seats while the sergeant collected their purchases.

“We did so enjoy your company this afternoon, Captain,” the commander’s wife thanked him.

“My pleasure, Mrs. Bettendorf.” But the response was merely words, spoken without sincerity or any attempt to feign it.

“The major and I are having a little get-together this evening to welcome Lieutenant and Mrs. Sloane to Fort Bayard. I do hope you’ll come, Captain,” Hannah invited, and saw the polite but definite refusal forming in his expression.

“Of course he’ll be there, won’t you, Captain?” Mrs. Bettendorf stated in the most positive manner.

“How can I possibly decline?” He bowed his head in a subservient manner, a resigned acceptance flattening his smile.

As the empty ambulance with its escort of riders rattled toward the stables, Cutter took his leave of the women and remounted his brown cavalry horse. Instead of heading toward the barns, he turned the heavy-headed animal in the direction of Suds Row. Cutter knew what tonight’s party meant—formal military dress, so he’d be needing his clean laundry.

The long, rectangular parade ground was like a village square with everything built around it. Officers’ Row was the “right” side of town, and Suds Row was the “wrong” side. The parade ground that separated them was as wide as the class distinction that separated
them. Even if the Ninth hadn’t been a colored regiment, there would have been no socializing between the families of the officers and those of the enlisted men, and almost no contact of any kind except for the laundress services or the occasional maid help.

The brown horse carried its rider across the parade ground at a shuffling trot and responded sluggishly to the pressure on the reins that turned it down the row of tent housing behind the adobe-walled barracks. A handful of young Negro children, pickaninnies, stopped their noisy play to stare at the white officer.

Halfway down the row Cutter saw the ripely curved black woman standing by fire and stirring something in a big iron pot. He slowed his horse to a walk as he approached her, the sight of her lush body blotting the children out of his vision. Clothes boiled in the iron kettle. As she stirred them with the long, water-whitened stick, her body swayed from the hips with the rhythm of it. Hers was an earthy beauty, full pouting lips and knowing eyes that looked at a man and knew what he wanted.

Steam and perspiration had combined to plaster the cotton blouse to her torso. Her full, rounded breasts were clearly defined through the dampened fabric, even to the extent of showing the nubby points of her nipples. Cutter had trouble looking away from them. Cimmy Lou Hooker had a body that aroused a man, regardless of the color of her skin—and the fact that she was his sergeant’s wife.

She stepped back from the heat for a moment’s relief from the steam and smoke and pressed her hands to the small of her back, flexing her muscles and thrusting forward those tautly round breasts. When she caught sight of him sitting on his horse watching her, her pose became deliberately provocative.

“You likin’ what you see, Cap’n Cutter?” She
grasped the long stick and slowly churned the clothes some more, making the action somehow suggestive.

“Is my laundry ready, Mrs. Hooker?” The saddle leather squeaked as he shifted his weight and settled deeper in the flat-shaped McClellan saddle.

“How come you always pick up yore clothes yo’self and don’t nevah send that young striker of yores?” She continued to stir the boiling clothes, her coffee-brown face all shiny and her young earthy beauty powerful as sin. “What you afraid I’m gonna do to him?”

“I know what you’d do. It’s what the sergeant might do that worries me,” Cutter acknowledged dryly.

“I knows how to keep John T. happy,” Cimmy Lou insisted softly, and laughed when he looked away. She rested the stick against the side of the big iron kettle and moved away from the fire, wiping her hands on her skirt. “Best be fetchin’ yore laundry for you. That
is
what you came fo’, ain’t it, Cap’n?”

“Yes.” He watched her start toward the large tent with its door flap tied open. She had a natural way of moving that always pulled a man’s glance to her hips—the same way that, when she talked, his eyes were drawn to her lips.

Stopping short of the door, she turned to look back at him. “Ain’t you gonna get off that horse and come with me?”

“I don’t mind waiting.” Cutter refused the invitation as she’d known he would. It was a game she played— she liked playing with men. Marriage hadn’t changed that about her. She knew what she did to them, and she liked doing it. At times, Cutter wasn’t sure whether he envied John T. or pitied him.

“Are you afraid of comin’ inside this tent with me, Cap’n?” she taunted. “Maybe you think you might not be man enough?”

“Is any one man enough for you?” he countered, unsmiling.

Anger flashed in her eyes at the implied insult, and Cimmy Lou swept inside the tent. Cutter’s horse stamped at the flies buzzing incessantly about its legs, the brown hide on its withers shuddering to shake them off. She was gone only a matter of seconds, then reappeared at the tent’s opening with a bundle of fresh laundry in her arms. She crossed to him, her bandanna-wrapped head tilted at a proud angle. He took the clothes from her.

“Reckon yore goin’ to that party Miz Wade’s havin’ tonight. I gotta go dress her hair fo’ her—and Miz Bettendorf, too,” she informed him importantly. “My mama taught me all ‘bout such things. She used to be Miz Devereaux’s personal maid. ‘Course, that was b’fore the war.” She lifted her hand, turning up her rose-brown palm. “You owe me five dollahs, Cap’n Cutter.”