Bandit's Embrace (The Durango Family) (8 page)

“Yes, sir,” Murphy muttered, but he looked chastened. “Still, maybe we can at least catch them four robbers.”

Mackenzie nodded, looking again at the dispatches. “A pinto horse with blue eyes ridden by a big, blond man, a used-up gunfighter, and two others, one in Union blue, one in Rebel gray. Somebody at least got a good description. Every fort in Texas has been alerted. Those outlaws won’t escape.” He thought about it. “The army’s embarrassed to get robbed in broad daylight. We’ll get that payroll back and with it our self-respect.”

“Sure, but me men’d rather go after them bloodthirsty Injuns,” Murphy pushed his blue cap back on his sparse hair. “Old Cougar is sittin’ across the Rio Grande by his campfire, laughin’ at us!”

“Duty, Murphy.” The colonel went back to the window, leaned against it to stare out at the soldiers drilling on the dusty parade ground. “As long as I’m in charge at Fort Clark, we do our duty, follow orders, nothing else.”

Old Cougar, aged chief of the Mescalero Apache, rode into camp at the head of his war party. He straightened his shoulders with pride as the women and children ran from their wickiups, shouting and waving.

Yes, it had been a good raid against the tejanos, their blood spilling into the sand in payment for everything the whites had done against his people.

Triumphantly, he threw his gray head back, yelled a victory cry while the captured horses and cattle thundered in confusion around the war party. The Mexican merchants and traders of the town of Remolino would be pleased to barter for the stolen Texas livestock.

Apache. It was a name their foe, the Zuni, had given them, most often screamed with fear. Apache. Enemy.

He dismounted with dignity and stood straight and tall, the light reflecting off the magic iron shirt he wore. It had belonged to his father before him, and his father’s father. One of his warrior ancestors had found it on the bones of a Spanish conquistador lost in the desert.

Aiee, his bones ached if the weather was damp. Almost seventy years had he counted, but today he felt like a young brave in the olden days. It has been a long time since he’d rode with Mangas Coloradas and Cochise in the harsh mountain country far to the northwest.

Cougar handed the reins of his sorrel mount to another warrior, aware of the reverence of his people who were crowding in around him. But his wrinkled old face looked for only one person in the crowd of shouting, chanting Mescaleros.

“Grandfather! Grandfather!”

Eagerly, the elderly chief turned to seek out that familiar voice, saw his half-grown grandson pushing his way through the crowd toward him. “Little Bear, I have brought you a gift of the finest palomino colt you have ever seen!”

His grandson smiled with warmth and affection. He was exceptionally tall for an Apache and ruggedly handsome, except for his broken nose. Someday, Cougar thought with sudden fury, someday I will find that trio. . . .

“Grandfather, we must talk! Something important has happened while you were gone.”

Cougar put his arm around his fifteen-year-old grandson’s shoulders, and they walked toward the wickiup. Little Bear was all the family the old chief had left. One at a time, the white man himself or his diseases had killed the others. The painful memories returned though he did not want to think of them, of what had happened to the boy’s parents five years ago. “We will smoke and eat,” he said, “and you tell me what has happened here and I will tell you of the raid across the border.”

The boy scowled, shaking his shoulder-length ebony hair back. He wore it in the Apache style, loose, with a scarlet headband on his dark forehead. His muscular chest was bare though he wore a breechcloth, leggings and knee-high moccasins to guard against poisonous snakes. “I am a man,” he said, fingering the beaded cougar tooth and claw necklace his grandfather had given him. “I should have been allowed to go along on this attack!”

“No, my grandson.” Cougar led him through the door of the wickiup, sighed gratefully as he sank down on the robes before the fire. He was too old to do this much longer, but someone must lead his people. “I need you here to look after the camp, the women and children while I am gone.”

Little Bear sat down cross-legged before the fire. “You say that, but other boys my age have already taken their first war trail.”

“Maybe next time,” the old man murmured. They had had these words before. The boy was precious to him—too precious.

“I hear talk,” the boy grumbled, staring into the fire. “Everyone says you fear to lose me, will always find reasons to keep me from going.”

Old Cougar could not bring himself to lie so he did not answer, staring instead into the fire. Both his wives, his many sons and daughters, the grandchildren were dead. All that was left to him was this one, tall strong grandson.

A girl with a mutilated nose brought pottery bowls of food, and bowed as she-offered them to the pair, her dark eyes lingering on the boy.

“Let us eat now.” The old chief laughed, grateful for the interruption. Sooner or later, the boy would be a brave. But the old man could not bear it if this last one were taken from him. No, somewhere there might be a strong son from that white girl, maybe even a grandson.

He took the food, dipped his hand into the mesquite beans, the roasted rabbit. Like his old enemies, the Comanche, he would not touch fish. Like the Kiowa, bear meat was taboo to him. The hot chili peppers tasted good, and he savored the crisp corn cakes although his teeth were worn and it was difficult to chew. He thought wistfully of
tiswin,
the strong, Apache beer that he would have had in his own country. Instead, he reached for a gourd of warm
chich’il libaye,
the coffee boiled from live oak leaves. Someday soon, he wanted to go back there and help Cochise defend their land.

He said nothing until the girl left. “I see the maidens looking at you, my grandson. Soon you will be wanting to take a wife, bring strong sons into the world.”

The boy looked up from the roasted meat he tore at. “That one lusts for any man; that’s why her husband has cut off her nose! But what respectable maiden would consider as husband a man who has won no war honors yet in going against our enemies?”

“Someday,” the old man promised solemnly, “your name will be known far and wide as a great chief of the Ha’i’aha Mashgale’, the Mescalero Apache. You will win many battles against our foes.” But not yet, he thought grimly as he ate, my heart would be too filled with pain to lose him. “I grow weary of this foreign place and sometimes, even of our allies, the Lipan and the Kickapoo. I yearn to return to our old home in our hills that the invading whites call New Mexico and Arizona.”

The boy paused, brushed his hand across his hawklike, broken nose. “I have news myself.” He leaned forward eagerly, the crispy rabbit still clutched in his hand. “While you were gone, our scouts reported three men crossed the wide river, came through our country and headed south.”

Cougar wiped his wrinkled hand across his greasy mouth, smearing the war paint on his face. “Three men?” His ears pricked up like a coyote’s. “The trio we seek?”

The boy nodded, continued eating. “Three, Grandfather. One who looked like a gunfighter, a big one in the soldiers’ blue and a short one in an old gray coat like those of the soldiers that fought the blue-coated ones.”

“That could be anyone,” Cougar argued, reaching up to finger the cougar tooth and claw necklace he wore, one identical to that on his grandson’s strong neck. There had been one other necklace. . . . “I wish I had been here.”

“It must be them,” the boy insisted. “The pistolero rode a gray horse. I should have chased them down myself.”

“Alone against three after what they did to you five years ago?” The old man peered at him intensely. “You have more courage than sense.” He thought about torture, the most terrible torture he could devise. “We’ll get them.”

“But they have gotten away,” the boy said with an annoyed gesture as he finished his meat. “They have ridden south.”

Cougar was suddenly no longer hungry, remembering the scene when he had found his dead son and daughter-in-law. “For gringos to come here, there must be gold involved, otherwise they would not be so loco as to come into our hunting grounds.”

“We should ride after them,” the boy jumped to his feet.

Old Cougar reached for his pipe. “Do you know the big, wooly
na’iltl’oole,
the spider the gringos call the tarantula?”

“So? I know it.” Little Bear nodded. “It does not chase after prey but lays a trap and waits.”

The old man smiled knowingly, arched his hand and moved it across the blanket in spidery motions. “Sooner or later, those three will ride back north through our country. And when they do . . .” He grinned and made the motion of the big spider leaping out of its trap door. “We will get them by lying in wait.”

The boy fingered his broken nose, his scarred face. “It will not be enough to pay for the deaths of my parents.”

“We will make it enough.” The old man glared down at his clenched fist. “We will make their deaths last a long time as only Apaches know how, I promise that!”

He needed to think. “Now go ride the fine palomino colt I have brought you. It is colored like the sun.” He patted his tall grandson’s muscular arm with deep affection.

“You are right,
shiwoye hastiin
Ndolkah,
” which was Apache for Grandfather Cougar. The boy smiled. “There is much yet I need to learn before I lead our people.”

Cougar gestured him to leave, leaned back with a sigh to light his pipe from the embers of the fire. His last relative. He said the word in Apache:
shichoye.
Grandson.

Idly he smoked, looking into the flickering fire. Although it was the beginning of the time of
T’aa’acho
that whites called May, he felt cold and his ancient bones ached. Somehow he did not think he would survive another year, but he had a duty to his people until Little Bear was old enough to lead.

He stared into the campfire. The gringo’s wagons had burned with orange flames that day his band had first raided into Texas. The white girl’s face came to him with sudden clarity even though it had been forty or more years

The
isdzan.
The woman. He smiled in spite of himself, remembering the female with hair the color of white man’s gold, eyes like the sky. Cougar had been a young brave then, virile as a mustang stallion. His war party had left their usual haunts, caught the settlers just moving into south Texas.

The old man leaned back against the willow backrest with a sigh, remembering the softness of the woman, her full, white breasts. In his mind, he relived the triumph of that long-ago raid. But mostly he remembered the girl. He should have taken her away as a captive, kept her for his own. . . .

She had been brave for a woman, fighting him as he chased her down, ripped her clothes away. What foreign tongue she spoke, he did not know; it was not the language of the
tejanos
or even the words of the Spanish.

But she shook her head and screamed in defiance, fighting him off. Even now he smiled, admiring her memory. He had pulled her to him, twisting her hands behind her so he could taste her naked breasts, had run his dark, hard hands over her pale skin.

When he threw her down to mount her, he pinned her hands over her head so that her pink nipples stood up, firm and proud, on her rounded breasts for his seeking mouth. Her small hands were red and callused, and he felt anger that such a pretty thing should have been worked so hard.

He considered stealing her away. As a younger, favored wife in his wickiup, she would have a privileged life and much bright clothing and jewels from his raids, for Ndolkah, the Cougar, was a noted warrior.

But she had a man and children. Cougar had seen them flee from the wagon, the man grabbing up a son, but not stopping for the woman when she stumbled and fell behind.

A coward. Her man was a coward, Cougar thought with contempt as he pulled the woman against him and covered her open mouth with his own. This custom of the whites was pleasurable to him, and he forced his tongue between her pink lips as a sign of his domination while he separated her thighs with his stroking hand.

Around them, fire and fury: screaming, shooting, the smell of flames and smoke and blood.

Cougar whispered to the girl that she was his, that he intended to steal her as a mustang stallion steals choice fillies from lesser stallions. If her man would not fight to keep her, he did not deserve her. He lay between her thighs, his manhood throbbing hard against her entry, and as he murmured to her, she stopped fighting and looked into his eyes as if no man had ever shown such desire for her.

Very slowly, Cougar slipped his pulsating maleness deep into her velvet sheath and she was wet with the wanting of him.

Hiding in the grass, her white man watched. But fear was strong on his pale face, and he did not come to challenge Cougar for possession of the woman.

A man who will not gamble his life to keep such a beauty does not truly desire such a prize, the young brave thought contemptuously as he lay throbbing in her depths, stroking her light hair. She did not fight him now, and he knew the white man would be angry with her, seeing that she did not scream and struggle.

While her man watched from a distance, Cougar rode her into ecstasy, making her moan and arch up against him while he sucked her firm nipples, drove into her quivering satin that held his maleness as if she would never let him go.

And when her blue eyes flickered closed and her white body arched eagerly against his dark one, he would contain his desire no longer. He emptied his seed deep within her, thinking of the child she might give him. He lay on her satin belly and kissed her beautiful face, knowing he would take this one with him. What sons this one would give him!

But even as he stood up, pulled her to her feet, the woman began to cry. Cougar gestured toward his war-painted pony, making it clear that she was a prize to be taken. She shook her head, pointed toward the children crouched with the man over the little rise in the creekbed.