Hostage Heart (3 page)

Shivering, Lark tugged and pulled until she got the dusty cowboy boots off the man’s feet. After getting Kincaid situated on the bed and covered, she ran lightly across the yard. The eastern horizon was lightening from gray to a pale pink, announcing that within another hour Holos would rise.

There were two bunkhouses, one for the single wranglers and the other for the old Apache men and women who had been left behind by their clans to die. Small homes set farther back in the forest housed the families of the married wranglers.

As Lark neared the second bunkhouse, she thanked Us’an and her father for his generosity of spirit. It had become widely known over the years that Roarke Gallagher would take in the Old Ones who could no longer move with their rancherias.

Nomads, the Apache clans moved around the desert and mountains with the seasons. When the elderly could no longer keep up, they voluntarily stayed behind to starve to death. Roarke had taken in twelve such Apaches over the years and, in return for one hour of work a day, they got free room and board. A soft smile touched Lark’s mouth as she mounted the steps and quietly opened the wooden door.

“I was expecting you, daughter.”

Old Ny-Oden, his white hair hanging long across his shoulders, sat on his bunk. Once he had been the shaman, or medicine man, for the Jicarilla Apache. Roarke Gallagher had made it known years ago that when Ny-Oden wanted to step down as shaman and pass his knowledge on to a younger man, he would be welcomed at the ranch. Lark remembered the small, wiry Apache with sparkling obsidian eyes who had come to the ranch when she was five years old. Ny-Oden had taught her the ways of a shaman, and she loved him like a grandfather.

“There isn’t much time, Grandfather. A man is hurt. A bullet wound in his leg. He’s asked for our help.”

Ny-Oden placed his clawlike hand in hers, allowing her to help him stand. His hands, once supple, were now frozen into the talonlike positions of an eagle hunting prey. The knuckles were permanently swollen, and over the years he had lost all of his manual mobility.

When that had happened, Ny-Oden had gone to Roarke and told him he was no longer of use and would leave the ranch to die alone. Roarke had told him that if he would teach Lark the ways of shaman and guide her in nursing the people as well as the animals, he could stay. The bargain had been struck to the happiness of all concerned.

“You were waiting for me,” Lark said, noticing that the old man was already dressed. “Why?”

“Daughter of mine, Us’an awakened me moments ago and told me to wait for your arrival.”

Lark patiently led Ny-Oden out to the porch. “I wish Us’an talked to me the way he talks with you. Ga’n was here shortly after sunset,” she said.

Ny-Oden tilted his white head, studying her intently. “There were words between you?”

“Aren’t there always? At one time, he wasn’t evil. Now, he is. I think he’s under the wicked spell of Owl-Man Monster.”

The Apache believed that the monster took on the guise of a man with the face of an owl and stalked the night, hunting for victims to kill. Roarke had told her that Owl-Man Monster was akin to the bogeyman that white people believed existed in the dark of night. She placed her arm around the frail, sixty-year-old Apache. “I’m frightened, Grandfather. I think this is the man for whom Ga’n was hunting. He’s badly wounded.”

“My
di-yin
told me that a
pindah
would come,” Ny-Oden agreed in his reedlike voice.

“I wish you had told me.” But Lark knew that a shaman’s
di-yin
, or power from the unseen world, often told him many things. Whether Ny-Oden passed them on to her was up to him. Many times, Ny-Oden would get a vague feeling of something about to happen, but be unable to describe it in detail. Still, Lark would have settled for even an inkling of this night’s unending surprises.

When they had climbed the porch steps, Ny-Oden halted to catch his breath. “My
di-yin
has told me much of this stranger’s arrival, daughter.”

Worriedly Lark looked down at the old man, who was stooped over with age. “Grandfather, tell me that no more sadness or violence will befall us. I’m young, but my heart is torn and bleeding. I cannot take much more. I have forty people to clothe and feed. I must make money for the bank so that we can keep our beautiful home. I cannot disappoint those who have created this ranch.” She gestured toward the bedroom, and they walked toward it at a snail’s pace. “My own feelings tell me this is no ordinary
pindah
. I sense much trouble and anger in him, Grandfather.”

Several seconds passed before Ny-Oden spoke. “You come from the strongest of Apache blood, my daughter. Those in your family were all chiefs and leaders. You are no less than them. Take heart and remember that. The stranger must be cared for. No
pindah
doctor will come from Prescott to save his life. He is in our hands, as it should be.”

Shoving aside her own personal disappointment in Ny-Oden’s riddle-like answer, Lark led him through the door.

Ny-Oden lowered himself slowly into a maple rocking chair near the bed. Lark took a multicolored blanket and placed it across the old Apache’s lap to keep him warm in the chill of the early morning.

“Daughter, you will need your shaman’s supplies,” Ny-Oden directed. “But first, examine the extent of his wound.”

Lark gazed down at the ugly, festering wound that could be seen through the slit in Kincaid’s dirty Levi’s. “It appears to be a single bullet, Grandfather.”

“How many days old? Your nose will tell you.”

With a grimace, Lark straightened. She lit three kerosene lamps, setting two on stands on either side of the brass bed and a third on the mantel of the fireplace. “It festers badly. I would guess three, perhaps four days.”

Ny-Oden nodded sagely. “Does it seep with a straw color or blood?”

Lark would have to slit open the Levi’s in order to ascertain that. “I don’t know.”

“Undress him completely, daughter.”

Lark stared at the shaman. “Grandfather?”

“Undress him. His clothes are of filth and more than likely filled with lice or other vermin. Place many blankets beneath him to soak up his fever sweat.”

“But…” She had never seen a man completely undressed except for the young male children who played naked in the summer. It was not permissible for any maiden to look on a man’s body until after she was married.

“I would do it myself were it not for my frozen hands and failing eyesight,” Ny-Oden said. “All I can do is sit here and guide you. Hear me, daughter. Us’an has placed this man’s life in your hands. A shaman, whether man or woman, must minister to both without blushing like a red field poppy.”

Lark nodded, ashamed of her reaction to his request. Ny-Oden had not been able to treat anyone for the last five years. Instead, he had led her verbally, step-by-step, through whatever needed to be done; whether it was to mend a child, a woman, or a man, or to heal an animal’s wound. The situation had never arisen in which she had to doctor a naked man. Lark woodenly began to strip Matt Kincaid of his clothes. Her fingers trembled as she unbuttoned the dark blue cotton shirt, pulling it apart to expose his darkly haired barrel chest. Eyes widening, Lark hesitated. Among Apaches, a hairless body was desirable and considered a pleasing mark of beauty. No Apache had hair such as this man! He looked like a black bear in her mind. Yet, as Lark stared at him, she acknowledged that he had a primal male beauty about him. His shoulders were clean and broad, silently attesting to the hidden strength lying in wait in them. Like the Apaches, his chest was well rounded, the muscles taut and firm beneath that light mat of unsightly hair. A sheen of sweat glistened beneath that curly abundance, and it forced Lark back to work.

“He’s sweating heavily, Grandfather.” She removed the shirt and dropped it on the oak floor beside the bed.

“Fever is eating him up. We must hurry, daughter.”

Ny-Oden rarely sounded so urgent, and Lark quickly pulled open the belt. Her mouth grew dry as she unsnapped the six buttons to the Levi’s. Apache men wore a breechclout beneath their trousers. He wore something similar, although Lark thought the garment looked strange as she peeled the Levi’s down his narrow hips. Her bowie knife was beneath the other pillow and she retrieved it, then positioned the tip over the wounded thigh. The steel blade glinted in the predawn light as she snagged a torn slit of the Levi’s, ripping it cleanly open.

“Ugh.” Lark groaned, watching with mounting fear as a straw-colored ooze pearled across his swollen and discolored leg.

Ny-Oden leaned forward, watching her intently. “Quickly, daughter. The wound is crying to be cleaned and eased of its fevered state.”

Matt Kincaid was beautiful, Lark realized as she finished removing his trousers. His thighs were hard, and as powerfully built as the finest of stallions. Despite the hair on his legs, Lark admitted he was well proportioned as few men could be. He was a giant, even taller and larger than her father. He possessed walnut-brown hair that held strands of gold beneath the lamplight.

Girding herself to follow Ny-Oden’s orders, Lark pulled off the strange-looking breechclout. Heat burned in her cheeks, and she avoided Ny-Oden’s gaze. She scolded herself: he looked no different from the Kentucky Stud before he was going to breed a mare in heat.

“Cover him with many blankets except around the wound,” Ny-Oden urged more gently. “Later he will need to be bathed.”

Lark nodded, tucking several blankets around him. His name is Matt Kincaid, she reminded herself sourly. Ny-Oden had said Us’an had chosen her to care for him. Humbly she must accept his dictate. Didn’t Us’an realize how unsure she was around
pindahs?
Would Matt Kincaid wake to curse her as the children at the school in Prescott had done when she rode in with her father? Biting down on her lower lip, Lark went to the kitchen to start a fire in the iron stove and set several kettles of water on to boil.

For the next half hour, while the water heated, Lark set out the supplies she would need. After determining that a single bullet was lodged deep in Matt’s thigh, she concentrated on how to get it out. She mixed
yerba santos mer
, an herb that coagulated the blood, into a thick pulp. Taking some moldy tortillas from the kitchen, Lark crumbled them up with the herb and added
hodenten
, made from ground poppies and made sacred by Ny-Oden’s incantations. A bit of water finished the preparation and she set aside the large bowl. After passing the tip of her smaller hunting knife through the flame of one of the kerosene lamps, Lark was ready.

She prayed to Us’an that he would keep Matt Kincaid unconscious so that he would not feel the pain. Her hand shook briefly as she held the knife over the wound.

“I am afraid, Grandfather.”

“Us’an will guide your hand, my daughter.”

Taking a deep breath, she twisted the knife once and dug deftly. Dark black blood flowed out of the wound, spilling across her fingers as she held his leg steady. And then fresh red blood followed as she retrieved the flattened piece of lead from his body.

Kincaid groaned, and Lark froze. He moved slightly, muttering unintelligibly, but remained unconscious. Grateful, Lark quickly took hot, soapy water and a cloth and cleansed the wound. Around the ranch, she was called upon to minister to animal wounds all the time. She tried to imagine that Matt was an animal in need of her gentle hand.

After packing the wound with the poultice, Lark wrapped his thigh. Wiping the perspiration from her brow, she glanced over at Ny-Oden, whose black eyes were shiny with silent praise.

She set to work cleaning Matt Kincaid’s filthy body next. By the time she got to his hips, Lark began to feel shaky inside. She tried not to stare at his large male symbol, pretending he was the stallion instead. Nevertheless, her heart quickened as a cauldron of new and undefined emotions swirled and eddied deep within her. She gently held him captive in her fingers, cleaning him. Was this the source of mysterious joy that a newly married woman described in whispers only to her married friends? Was this the source of delight she had heard them talk about in words of awe and trembling beauty?

Keeping her thoughts to herself, she looked up and saw a gleam in Ny-Oden’s eyes. The shaman was reading her mind! Lark turned crimson, the heat prickling her cheeks as never before. No Apache maid should be thinking such thoughts.

“It is done,” she said some time later, her voice scratchy with strain. Matt Kincaid was sleeping soundly, wrapped warmly from head to toe in several blankets. Lark had always thought that the brass bed had been built for a giant and not for her, but Kincaid’s feet touched the bottom of the footboard. Again, she was in awe of his height. Truly he was like a bear.

“You’ve done well, daughter,” said Ny-Oden. “I will sit with him and chant to my
di-yin
. His fever is high and needs to be broken. Prepare lobelia tea for when he awakes. We must chase the fever from his body or it may claim his life.”

Terror wrenched at her heart and Lark stood very still.
He is too beautiful to die!
she wanted to cry out. Hadn’t Us’an taken enough from her? Wasn’t he satisfied with the lives he’d already claimed? Moistening her lips, Lark stared down at the man. Some of the tension had drained from his gaunt, whiskered face. His mouth was slightly parted, and she liked the shape of it. Lark saw so much in his now-peaceful features. She saw kindness there and, yes, even sensitivity. What drew her so powerfully to this stranger? Confused and exhausted, Lark turned away.

“Daughter?”

She halted in the doorway. “Yes?”

“Us’an may leave the decision as to whether or not he goes to the Big Sleep in your hands.”

“How can that be? No one’s life lies in another’s. Us’an gives and takes. That’s what you’ve always said.”

“Sometimes,” Ny-Oden said softly, “Us’an bids us to give more than what we think we have to give, daughter. But he also provides us with the courage to carry that extra load.”

“I’m so tired of death, Grandfather.” She choked on a sob, fighting the tears that wanted to come. “I would never let any person or animal die that came to me. I would do whatever I could to save that life.”