The Pride of Hannah Wade (36 page)

“Don’t touch him,” Wade snarled.

“But, suh, he’s hurt.”

“I said leave the bastard alone!” He took a threatening step toward the trooper; then he seemed to catch himself, and turned away. John T. released a slow breath and came forward.

“He needs mo’ than a patch job, Moseby,” was John T.’s only comment at the sight of the gut-shot Indian, neither confirming Wade’s order nor countering it.

The hounds had caught their quarry, and John T. turned toward the sounds of their approach as they shoved their Apache prisoners in front of them with the muzzles of their rifles. When the first one stepped within the upreaching glow of the firelight, something clicked in John T.’s memory. He stared at the deepchested Apache with the wide, heavy-boned features, lank black hair hanging to his shoulders, and the small scar on his cheek. With recognition came a cold feeling of dread as John T. looked at Major Wade. Very slowly he remembered that Wade had never seen Lutero before. And Amos Hill wasn’t with them, so there would be no questioning of the prisoners. John T.
stared at the Apache Major Wade had hunted these past weeks with so much zeal and hatred—and kept silent.

Reveille, stable call, mess, fatigue, and drill call—the cavalry routine was a timeworn system. Hannah stood beneath the
ramada
and watched the close-order maneuvers of the company upon the parade ground, columns splitting, fours left, fours right, at a walk,’a trot, a gallop.

“Right by twos!” The shouted commands had a deep-voiced cadence to them.

Mrs. Mitchell passed by, a parasol raised to shade her face from the morning sun, and nodded to Hannah. She bobbed her head in acknowledgment of the greeting, but neither spoke. Here, too, was a routine Hannah recognized—the morning ritual of tea at the commander’s quarters. She was not surprised that her previous standing invitation had not been renewed. If she was there, they couldn’t very well talk about her. What better food for gossip than delicious scandal?

It was so bitterly and tragically ironic that she had been the victim of a violent act, perpetuated over many months, yet it was her morals they questioned, her virtue they doubted. Perhaps if she acted more humble, showed some shame, instead of defending her actions and holding her head high, they . . . That ubiquitous “they” included her husband. About the only person who didn’t expect her to feel guilty was that man drilling the company on the parade ground, Captain Jake Cutter.

“Detail’s comin’ in.” Someone shouted to alert the post.

Word of the night patrol’s return spread quickly to all corners of the post. There was a stirring and a gradual drawing of people to the quadrangle to observe the
arrival. Hannah left the porch and wandered toward the top of the parade ground, watching as they filed through the gate.

Stephen sat tall and erect in his saddle, leading the detachment that entered the fort, his beard-darkened face the only evidence he showed of the all-night ride. The troopers were round-shouldered with fatigue, but their heads were up. In the first glance, searching for signs of casualties, Hannah took little note of the two Apache prisoners, astride a pair of horses that were harnessed together, their hands tied behind their backs.

When he saw her coming to welcome him back, Stephen brought his fingers to the brim of his hat, saluting her with a faint nod of his head. She saw the tired hollows under his eyes. A bitter hurt claimed her, Stephen had preferred the bone-weary fatigue of a night’s ride after Apaches to the sleeplessness of lying beside her with all his thoughts, questions, and insecurities.

Her glance strayed from him and was caught by the Apache prisoner riding the near horse. The easy sway of his slouched body to the horse’s rhythm struck a familiar chord. Hannah stared, her steps slowing as she recognized Lutero. She felt flattened, too stunned to think for several heartbeats.

Then all the silent loathing and virulent emotion that she had kept bottled inside came pushing to the surface. The mental and physical tortures she’d suffered, the long months of slavery, the forced marriage were his doing. Hannah gazed at him and saw the source of all her problems. Everything that had gone wrong could be traced directly to him. Stephen’s rejection of her, however reluctant and bitterly fought, and the failure by her peer group to accept her into their fold once more had been caused by Lutero’s capture of her. The whispers, the pointed fingers, the looks that followed
her wherever she went, all related directly back to him. Why did he have to show up now?

She walked faster, her hate growing along with the heated emotions feeding it—the wounded pride, the offended dignity, the damaged self-respect, and the remembered fear, the impotence and revulsion. At that moment she hated him with a violent passion.

Her attention was centered on him to the exclusion of all else. She did not smell the hot odor of lathered horses and sweating men or taste the dust in the air, stirred by the scuffling hooves. Her face was taut and her eyes burned blackly; she had doubled her hands into fists. She failed to see Stephen turn in his saddle and look back to discover the object that pulled her so strongly.

And Hannah didn’t see the horse and rider approach nearly at a gallop, didn’t see Cutter sliding off its back as he pulled the horse up so abruptly that it almost sat on its haunches. She saw nothing but Lutero until Cutter put himself in her path. When she tried to go around him, he caught her by the arms.

“Hannah, no.” The low, insistent words cautioned her against any action.

“Let me by,” Her stiff arms pushed against him, straining in angry resistance as she continued to stare over Cutter’s shoulder at Lutero. “Don’t you see who it is? I want him! It’s my right!” She demanded the Apache privilege of being given the life of the one who had wronged her.

He shook her to bring her attention to him, and his hard, blue gaze bored into her. “What is it you want with him, Hannah?” Jake demanded roughly, keeping his voice low. “Do you want to kill him, is that it? What will it solve? What will it change?”

She stopped struggling and bowed her head to elude his eyes, but the rage inside her was not something that responded to reason or logic. “I don’t know.”

Stephen hauled up his tired horse alongside them. “What’s going on here?” he demanded, then looked suspiciously at the Apache. “Who is he? Do you know him?”

“Lutero.” Cutter might as well have said Lucifer.

Wade stiffened, sitting erect in the saddle and reacting to the name as Hannah had known he would. Regret raged through him at the chance he had lost to kill the Apache last night; the time and place were wrong now. He couldn’t do it here in front of the colonel and the other officers, not in cold blood. He had his reputation to consider.

Stephen urged his horse toward the animal Lutero rode. Violence was coiled in him like a vibrating spring of tension. He stared into the dour, brutal face and trembled with the urge to kill the man who stood between him and his wife, the one who had taken her.

The silence stretched, and he became aware of the post’s attention on him and recognized how odd his behavior must seem. He gathered his composure and looked at the surrounding soldiers, who were eyeing him with tired interest.

“I’m bringing charges against this Indian. Take him to the stockade,” Stephen ordered. He didn’t look at Hannah as he rode to the front of the column, where Colonel Bettendorf awaited his report. “Dismiss the detail, Sergeant.”

A pair of troopers swung Lutero out of line. For a moment he faced Hannah. He looked at her. He looked
through
her. Hannah watched him ride past her, conscious that Cutter had shifted to stand beside her, one hand gripping her arm above the elbow, A rigid tension held her still, while hot, angry tears scalded her eyes.

“I’ll escort you home.” His statement was underlaid with a heavy tone of disapproval.

“No.” She resisted the guiding pressure of his hand, her gaze still following Lutero. “I want to see him locked up.”

Cutter said nothing, merely looking at her for a long moment; then he released a heavy breath and escorted her in the direction of the guardhouse. He didn’t like it, but he’d seen the determined, set of her jaw. She would go—with or without him. They angled across the parade ground as the detail of tired men and horses passed them, heading for the stables.

Standing at attention in front of the colonel, Stephen was conscious of the colonel’s wife and Mrs. Mitchell standing close by. Curtly he gave a brief outline of the night’s mission.

“The wounded driver, where is he?” The colonel looked toward the recovered supply wagon, with four blanket-wrapped bodies lying in the back.

“He was lung-shot, sir. He didn’t make it.”

“And the Apache?”

“He led the raid. He’s responsible for the murder and torture of those miners.” Stephen maintained a stiffly correct posture, raw energy relentlessly driving him beyond the bounds of fatigue.

“Your wife appeared to know him.” The colonel’s look probed for more information. “Is he—“

“Yes, sir.” Stephen interrupted so that he wouldn’t have to hear the rest of the question.

“I see.”

The absently expressed remark stirred Stephen’s anger and bitter resentment. He knew precisely what Colonel Bettendorf was “seeing” in his mind—Hannah and that Apache—and there was nothing Stephen could do about it, no way he could stop people from thinking about his wife and speculating about what the Apache had done to her.

His temper wasn’t helped when he overheard Mrs. Bettendorf
murmur, “Did you hear that? The Apache they just brought in is the one who took Mrs. Wade as his squaw.”

Bettendorf said in dismissal, “Good job, Major.”

Stephen responded with a stiff salute, then grasped the pommel and swung into the saddle. His tired horse turned toward the stables, but Stephen reined it in and headed for the guardhouse, spurring the animal into a canter across the quadrangle.

The sun glinted on the deep red fires in Hannah’s dark hair as she stood outside the iron-barred door and looked through the thick grate. Standing to one side of her, Cutter bent his head, lighting a cigar. He shook out the match as Stephen rode up and dismounted from his horse.

“Why did you bring her here, Cutter?” Stephen demanded in reproof, short-tempered and impatient.

“She insisted,” Cutter replied through his cigar, watchful beneath his indolence.

Stephen crossed to Hannah’s side. “You shouldn’t be here.” His gauntleted hand curved around the back of her arm, and he felt her rigid resistance. His glance stabbed at the dark form sitting on the cot in the deep shadows of the cell’s interior, silent and unmoving.

“What will they do with him?” Hannah didn’t take her gaze from the jailed Lutero.

“We’ll hold him here until the U.S. marshal comes; then he’ll be tried.” The roughness in his voice bespoke his rancor toward such civilized procedures in this Apache’s case. “I’ll take you home.”

She let herself be led away from the guardhouse. Hannah and Stephen walked together, but they were very much separate. Cutter watched them through the wisps of cigar smoke and sensed the friction that split them.

He noted Hooker’s approach and the way he looked after the departing couple. The sergeant came to stand
beside Cutter. For a minute, silence held between them; then John T. cast a glance at the prisoner behind the iron-barred door.

“If I’d told him last night that was Lutero, he’d have killed him sure,” John T. stated with a shake of his head that questioned the rthe woman hadightness of his choice to keep silent.

“He would have.” Cutter nodded slowly.

A
FTER SHE PLACED HER ORDER,
O
PHELIA BETTENDORF
wandered, to the front of the trader’s store and browsed, over ‘the limited assortment of threads and sewing items. Her glance strayed out the narrow window and paused on the figure walking by. She immediately motioned for her companion.

“Mrs. Mitchell,” she hissed in urgent command, and waited until the woman had joined her to point discreetly. “There she is. I’ll bet she’s going to the guardhouse where they have that Apache locked up. The colonel said it’ll be another week before the marshal comes.”

Mrs. Mitchell’s tongue clicked in a reproving manner. “It’s shocking, isn’t it? I should think she would not budge from her quarters until that murderer was taken from here.”

“I
certainly wouldn’t,” Ophelia Bettendorf remarked. “This thing has ruined her—simply ruined
her. It’s so sad. Everyone knows about those months she spent with the Apaches, Her reputation is permanently stained. A decent, respectable woman can’t risk being seen with her.”

There was complete agreement in Sadie Mitchell’s expression. “I’ve said it before: she should have killed herself before she let them touch her. Why, there’s just no knowing what all they did to her. And what kind of women let strange men touch them?”

As they watched, Hannah Wade walk past the post trader’s store, their lips were pursed in unforgiving lines. To have one of their own fall from grace was a reflection on them. As officers’ wives, a certain standard of conduct had to be kept, a certain propriety observed. They simply couldn’t let their husbands think that they might be like her and welcome the attentions of an Indian over death. It seemed to them that she must have wanted it or she would have fought or tried to escape; and failing that, she should have killed herself. But everyone could see that Hannah Wade was in remarkably good health, so it couldn’t have been that much of an ordeal—which meant that she must have been willing. It would have been best if she’d stayed with the Apaches instead of coming back and shaming her husband this way.