Apache Summer Read online

  Jeremiah hesitated.

  “Don’t you go getting’ no ideas, now, David Birch.”

  “I ain’t going to get any ideas! I want to get this blasted paint off, and that’s all!”

  Jeremiah walked to the bundles and picked up a satchel of clothing.

  He stared at David, then walked toward the brush.

  Tess kept her eyes on David. He smiled as he watched her in turn.

  “You think you’re going to get around Jeremiah, don’t you? Well, you’re not going to. I’m going to see to that.

  You’re going to reach old Chief Nalte, and then you won’t have to worry about writing those rabble-rousing pieces in that newspaper of yours anymore, ever again.

  You’ll have lots of other things to think about.” He cackled with laughter.

  “Lots and lots of other things. Like raising a whole little troop of papooses, yeah.” ,. Tess edge~l-around in the dirt, turning her back on him.

  He laughed all the harder, then he came forward and jerked her head back so her eyes watered as they met his.

  “I’m going to enjoy knowing where you are. Just like I enjoyed hearing Slater’s skull crush this morning. I really got a kick out of that.”

  She forced herself to smile.

  “Maybe his skull didn’t crush,” she said very softly.

  David gritted his teeth and yanked harder on her hair. “He’s gone, lady.

  Dead and gone. And you don’t need to worry about that no more, either.”

  He walked away, leaving her in peace at last. In time, Jeremiah returned, and he became her silent guard.

  She hadn’t the energy to say anything to him. They sat in silence while the darkness fell upon them. When David re. turned, the two men made a fire. There was cold chicken to eat and water from canteens, but they wouldn’t untie Tess’s hands, and the effort to eat suddenly seemed too great. She left the food, sipped some water and lay down in the dirt.

  She tried to tell herself that Jamie was alive. Any minute now he would come rushing out from the bushes and kill the two men and take her away.

  But he did not come. She closed her eyes in misery and tried to forget the nightmare visions of the day.

  Jeremiah came over and tossed a blanket around her shoulders and shoved a pack beneath her head for a pillow.

  “Don’t think about going nowhere,” he warned her. David obviously didn’t think the warning was enough. He stood and walked to the piles by the packhorse and came back with a good length of rope. She tried to inch away from him, but he tied one end of the rope around her ankle. Pinching her cheek, he spoke directly into her face.

  “If you move, I’ll feel it. If you run, I’ll make you pay for it.” He walked away with the other end of the rope in his hand.

  It didn’t really matter. If she had been threatened by evexy demon in hell, she couldn’t have run that night. She was too weary. Tears stung her eyes.

  When she closed them, she saw Jamie again, fighting, then falling. And she heard his whisper.

  I think I’m falling in love with you. It hurt to close her eyes; it hurt to open them. She prayed for sleep against the nightmare images. She tried to tell herself that he was still alive. But he would have come for her if he was alive. He would have come.

  And if he was not alive, well, then, she didn’t want to live, either.

  Jamie was alive, if only just barely.

  Jori found him around midnight, when the moon was full and high. The wagon had come home without Jamie or Tess, but very late. Jon had to try and track them from town in the darkness, and even when he had found signs that the wagon had stopped and the two of them had walked toward the river, it still took him time to find Jamie’s still, crumpled body.

  He drew off his buckskin jacket and wrapped it around his friend. He touched the wound at Jamie’s temple where the blood had dried. Carefully moving his fingers over the skull, he decided that it was not cracked or crushed. He took his kerchief to the river and soaked it and brought it back to Jamie, cleansing the bloo~way. Jamie’s body was icy cold.

  He needed warmth, and quickly.

  Jon rose carefully and lifted his friend’s body into his arms. He called to his pinto and the animal obediently trotted over to him. Bracing Jamie’s weight with his hand upon the pommel, he managed to somehow swing up with Jamie in his arms. Then he made a clucking sound and the animal took off at a smooth lope.

  At the ranch, Dolly, Hank and Jane were waiting with anxious concern.

  When Jori burst in with Jamie’s half naked body, Jane gasped and turned white.

  “Don’t you dare faint on me, young lady!” Dolly ordered her.

  “Bring him right to the sofa, Jori. Jane, you run upstairs and get blankets, lots of them. And you, Hank, I’m going to need a sewing kit for that wound.

  Some water and ~ome alcohol to clean him up, and maybe a little for the lieutenant to sip. My, that’s a mean and nasty bash!” Hank was on his way out. Jane was still staring in horror. “Move!” Dolly commanded her.

  In a moment the young woman was back with blankets. Jon draped them around Jamie and rubbed his feet. Hank ~turned with water and a sewing kit, and Dolly began to clean the wound. A long gash ran into the left side of Jamie’s temple.

  “It’s amazing he’s still breathing!” Dolly murmured. “He’s Missouri tough,” Jon told her.

  “He’ll make it, you’ll see.”

  “I intend to do my best to see that he does,” Dolly assured Jon. She looked at him anxiously.

  “What about Tess.9” Jon shook his head.

  “I don’t know. I had’ to get him back here before he died. I’m going back out to see what I can find.” He liftext his hat to Dolly and left. At the door he paused and looked back.

  “Now, don’t you let him die.”

  “I’m just going to sew him up. And I’m going to pray.” Jon hurried out.

  But when he returned to the river, he discovered that whoever had attacked Jamie and Tess had made an escape through the water. He would need daylight to track them. There was nothing he could do that night.

  But maybe there was. It was late, but saloons had a tendency to cater to the late crowd. Maybe he could find out more from casual conversation over a poker game than he could from a broken branch.

  He turned the pinto toward town.

  Jamie’s d~s were occasionally dark and occasionally erotic, but always fevered.

  He fought giants with buffalo headdresses. Then the battle would fade away, the powder would dissipate, the roar of the guns would cease. He wasn’t fighting Yankees anymore, he tried to tell himself in his dream world. He was a Yankee, dressed in blue. He was a specialist in Indian affairs, a linguist. And he knew Indians. He hadn’t needed Jon Red Feather to tell him that the Apache didn’t like scalping. It was a contaminating thing to them, and it had to be done with 191 careful ritual. He should have known from the very beginning that the woman hadn’t lied.

  The woman. Tess. And the Yankees were gone, and the Indians were gone, and he was lying by still, cool waters, and she was walking toward him. Her hair was like the sun, falling in soft, delicate tendrils over her breasts and down her back, and her smile was at once wistful and innocent and full of the most alluring promise. She knelt beside him and her fingers touched him, raking gently over his naked flesh. He couldn’t take his eyes from her. Her eyes were so giving, velvet and deep, deep blue, and startling in their honesty. He had thought that she would run, but she had not. And now, no matter whether he woke or slept, she was with him, the sun- ray webs of honey-gold hair spinning around him and wrapping him in the sweetest splendor.

  Her breath was soft against him. She leaned over him, and her breasts brushed against his chest, and he groaned aloud and waited. He wanted to pull her beneath him. He wanted to see her eyes widen and darken to mauve with the startling strength of passion. He wanted to feel her arms wrap around him.

  But the smoke was coming again. The powder. And people were shoutin
g; they were at war again. The war was over, but the fighting hadn’t ended. It was the Indians. It wasn’t the Indians. That was it. They could dress up all they chose, but they were not Indians. They had Tess. he couldn’t remember. yes! They had Tess, they had ridden away with her. By God! What they would do with her! He awoke and jerked up. A staggering pain seized his temple, and he cried out hoarsely, grabbing his head. The pain slowly subsided to a dull thudding, and he opened his Jori was sitting in front of him, watching him. Jamie groaned again.

  “what the hell happened? Where’s Tess?”

  “Von Heusen’s pseudo-Comancbe,” Jon said calmly, still studying him; Alarmed, beginning to remember much more clearly everything that had happened, Jamie sat up. He saw that his legs were bare, that he had only been covered with blankets, and he saw that Dolly and Jane and Hank were hovering anxiously behind Jon. He gritted his teeth against the new pain that had come with his movement, frowning.

  “Tess?”

  “She was gone.”

  “Gone! And you didn’t go for her”

  “Wait a minute, my friend,” Jori warned him.

  “You were supposed to have been dead—that’s the way they left you.

  You would have been dead, if I hadn’t brought you here. I couldn’t trail them in the dark”—” You can trail anyone!” Jamie savagely reminded him.

  ” Not when they ran the river, not without some light,” Jon said’.

  “But I did find out where they’re taking her.”

  “Where?”

  Jamie exploded. The sound of the word seemed to reverberate in his skull, and he grabbed it in an effort to ease the savagepain.

  “They’re taking her to the Comancheros. And the Comancheros are taking her to a renegade Apache chief down in Mexico named Nalte.”

  Jamie grabbed a blanket and staggered to his feet. Dolly cried out softly then scolded him, “Jamie Slater. What do you think you’re doing? You can’t go anywhere” — Jon had risen, too.

  “Sit down, Jamie. rll go.”

  “No! It’s my fault they took her. I’m going after her.”

  “You’re in no condition” — “I’m in damn fine condition!” Jamie roared.

  The sound of his own voice ravaged his temple. He shook his head.

  “I need my pants. And if you don’t want to be offend&t, Jane and Dolly, I need you two ladies to disappear. Now!”

  “Jamie Slater” — Dolly began. But he was already rising.

  “Jamie” — She turned around, pinkening. Jane let out a little gasp and went tearing up the stairs.

  “Want to wait until I’ve got some clothes for you?” Jon asked dryly.

  “I’ll throw something down the stairs,” Dolly said. She let out an indignant little snort.

  “Although what good you think you’re going to do that girl when you can barely hold your head up, I don’t know.” “I’ll be with him,” Jon said.

  Dolly was heading up the stairs.

  “I’ll go saddle up your horse,” Hank told Jamie, heading out.

  Jamie nodded his thanks, then confronted Jon.

  “You can’t come with me. I need you here.”

  “You can’t ride alone. You’re in no shape to do so.”

  “Then I’ll let you come as far as the border. Maybe we’ll catch up with them before that. If not, you’ll have to turn back.

  Jon, once I go after Tess, you’ll be the only one who can stand against yon Heusen here. You’ve got to do it.” He shuddered and sat on the sofa.

  “Comancheros! She could already be dead! And after yon Heusen’s men” — He broke off, white, panicked.

  “I’ll kill him,” he swore.

  “I’ll kill yon Heusen with my bare hands, and every other man who came near her.

  Jesus, Jon, it was my own damned fault”—” This was going on long before you came into it, Jamie. They meant to kill her on that wagon train. And it’s not as bad as you think. Von Heusen’s men won’t touch her, and the Comancheros won’t touch her, because Nalte wants his golden blond for himself, so I learned at the saloon.”

  ” At the saloon?”

  “There’s a whore there named Rosy who knows yon Heusen well—personally, that is. Every once in a while yon Heusen sends for her, and she goes out to his ranch. Last time she was there, he was sending out messages and making plans. This Nalte has always wanted a blond woman for a bride. You know the Apache. They usually only take one wife, unless they consider themselves well able to afford more than one. Nalte does very well. He has an Indian bride, but he wants a white woman, too. A blond white woman. And his requirements go a little further. He wants an innocent white woman.”

  Jamie stared at Jori blankly, then his face began to pale again.

  Jon frowned, then slowly sucked in his breath.

  “She isn’t an innocent white woman any more, is that it?”

  “Jamie Slater, here are your pants!” Dolly cried, dropping a pair of trousers down the staircase. Jamie wrapped the blanket around his waist and went to retrieve them. His hands were shaking as he stumbled into his pants.

  Dolly tossed down a shirt, and he shrugged it on also. “Jamie?” Jon said.

  Jamie paused, looking at his friend.

  “Maybe they won’t know. I doubt it’s something that Tess is going to rush around telling them,” Jori suggested.

  “First, yon Heusen’s men are going to have to be damned afraid of him not to hurt her,” Jamie said.

  “Then the Comancheros. Who the hell ever trusted a Comanchero?” He strode to the sofa and stared at Jori.

  “I’ve got to catch up with them before they get to this Nalte. Or I’ll have to try to talk to Nalte himself.”

  “Yes, you’ll very definitely have to talk to him,” Jon said gravely.

  “And carefully, Jamie. Nalte will not be easy to deal with. He’s watched wars and treaties go by for years, and he is a law entirely unto himself. He eschews everything white—except for the white men’s guns, horses and women.

  He moved his people into the mountains when the white men took over the plains, rather than have to deal with them.

  “He keeps to the old ways. His women do not buy cotton for their dresses, and his scouts do not wear cotton shirts. He moves about in a breech clout as do his braves in summer, in winter he warms himself with hides and furs.

  He is also intelligent, astute and very dangerous—an Apache to the core.”

  Hank had come in.

  “You need the cavalry,” he said. Jamie shook his head.

  “No, Hank. No. If I do that, they might ?dll her. If I don’t catch up with them before they hand her over to Nalte, I’ll have to speak with him personally and convince him to give her back. I_t’s our only chance.” Listen Hank, yon Heusen is going to think that he has both Tess and me out of the picture. If anyone comes around, act as if you haven’t seen either of us. That lawyer will let out the information about the will, and that will stall yon Heusen for a little while.”

  He paused, then strode over to the big desk, sat and drew out a piece of paper. He wrote on it quickly.

  “Now Hank, you make sure that this telegraph gets out today, you understand?

  It’s real important.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant Slater, I understand.”

  “Good. Jon will be back soon, and if I’ve any luck at all, I’ll bring Tess home to you again.” He paused.

  “If not, Hank, you hold tight. Help will come. Von Heusen isn’t going to win this one.” He stood again, gritting his teeth.

  I’ll be damned in hell a thousand times over before I let yon Heusen win this one!” He strode around the desk again in his bare feet.

  “Hank, I need a pair of boots that will fit me.”

  “Sure thing, Lieutenant.

  I’ll find you something.” Jamie nodded.

  “Jon—I need new guns.”

  In silence, Jon left to fulfill the request. They’d come with plenty of guns, and he would know what Jamie wante
d and what he needed.

  Twenty minutes later the guns were assembled and Jon and Jamie were ready to ride out. Dolly had made some coffee, and Jamie drank some quickly, wincing as the hot liquid filled him. He felt a twitch at his temple and felt the stitches there for the first time.

  “You sewed me up, Dolly?”

  “As pretty as a young girl’s ball gown, Jamie.”

  “Thanks.”

  They moved outside. Jamie and Jon mounted with the others looking on.

  “You bring Tess home now, you hear?” Hank said. “Please, please, bring her home!” Jane added, her large doe eyes wide and damp.

  Jamie smiled at Jane.

  “I’ll bring her home. I promise, Jane. I’ll bring her home, or I’ll die trying.”

  He tugged on the reins, and he and Jon turned their mounts and started off.

  The sun was rising already. It was falling in orange and gold splotches across the dry earth. Beyond them, it shimmered upon the mesas.

  He’d been out a long time, Jamie reckoned. And von Heusen’s men had already had Tess for a long time.

  His muscles clenched tight, his jaw locked, he damned himself again and again for what had happened. He should have been more careful. They never should have had the opportunity to sneak up on him. Hell, if he’d been that careless during the war, he’d have been dead half a dozen times over.

  He’d always been so damned good: he could hear a twig drop in a forest, he could hear the rustle of trees when it wasn’t just the wind, he could hear bare footsteps against the dry ~rth. But when it had mattered, he had failed.

  He’d failed Tess. He’d forgotten everything, staring into her violet-hued eyes, feeling her against him, hearing the whisper of her voice, the tremor of her words. He’d just had to prove something.

  She’d been so aloof, and he’d been so angry, and he hadn’t known why.

  Because she’d tried to draw away, and he hadn’t been about to tolerate it.

  No, he hadn’t been about to let it happen.

  He had just wanted her, and he hadn’t wanted her to escape him.

  He was falling in love with her.

  So what? he mocked himself. He hadn’t wanted to do so. He hadn’t suggested that she marry him—he’d just wanted to touch her. To sleep with her. To feel her beneath him, her breath coming in a desperate rush, her hips and thighs moving, her eyes, those eyes, so wide and still, sultry upon his. But he hadn’t been able to let her walk away from him. He just hadn’t been able to give her time.