The Pride of Hannah Wade (25 page)

“How many casualties, John T.?” Cutter jerked his head in the direction of the wounded men.

“Four. All flesh wounds, Grover says.” The sergeant confirmed that their losses were light, but didn’t pause. “These Apaches had a Mexican captive. House is bringin’ her in. You speak their lingo, Cap’n. Might be good if you come along.”

“Sure.” Cutter swung into step beside him.

Through the spiraling smoke of his cigar, he saw the trooper escorting a female captive. She carried an infant strapped in an Apache cradleboard in her arms. Something about her—the way she moved, the way she carried herself—bothered him. It wasn’t until they were a few feet apart that he felt the kick of discovery go through him. Stopping short, he stared into her clear brown eyes, and slowly removed the cigar from his mouth.

“Hannah—“ It was the way he’d come to think of her. After the initial check of his impulsive familiarity, Cutter let it carry him. “Hannah Wade.”

“Captain . . . Jake Cutter, isn’t it?” Her dark eyes seemed extraordinarily bright. Then she touched a hand to the rough shawl, self-consciously aware of her blanket and buckskin attire. She straightened with a dignity that Cutter was sure few women could match. “They . . . they took all my clothes.”

A smile gentled his hard-etched features. “Don’t apologize for your appearance, Mrs. Wade. We weren’t even sure you were alive anymore.” His voice was made husky by the emotions tightening in him.

“My husband . . . Stephen . . . is he well?” An awkwardness seemed to claim her as she struggled with the question.

“Yes, he’s in good health.” Cutter could have added that Wade was mourning her and missing her, but for some reason he didn’t. His attention shifted to the black-haired infant in the cradleboard, and a muscle flexed in his jaw. “Is the child yours?” The question sounded remarkably detached.

“No.” Her answer came automatically; then she looked at him, realizing what his thoughts had been. Cutter didn’t meet her glance as he kept all expression from his face and indefferently studied the Apache
boy-child. “He is Lutero’s son. Lutero and his wife, Gatita.”

“I suggest we give him to one of the captured Apache women,” Cutter said, and turned to Hooker. “Sergeant, have one of your men take the child over with the rest of the Apache captives.”

The sergeant stepped forward to take the baby from her, briefly meeting her glance before centering his attention on the child. She gave the baby into Hooker’s care, displaying only a faint reluctance to surrender her small charge to him. Her gaze followed them as the sergeant carried the infant away.

“The Apaches will look after the baby,” Cutter said to assure her. “His parents may be among the prisoners.” Although he didn’t recall seeing Lutero in the bunch.

“Of course. “She rubbed her hands over her arms, and Cutter sensed the nervousness that was just below the surface.

The blanket that had hooded her head slipped to her shoulders, and the sunlight fired the hidden red tones in her dark hair. It was smoothed back from her face, a headband circling it, and coiled into two vertical loops at the base of her neck. The style suited her, at once sleek and contained, yet primitive in its simplicity.

“We’ve boiled some coffee. Would you like a cup?” He gestured in the general direction of the camp’s center, where the casualties were being treated and a hot meal was being cooked, the first in two days.

“Yes, I would. It’s been a long time since I’ve had any
tu-dishishn,
black water.” There was a brief softening of the tension around her mouth, something akin to humor tugging at it.

“It’s camp coffee, so it’s likely to be strong,” Cutter warned as he swung around to walk on her right. She didn’t stroll across the enclave as she once would have,
but strode like an Apache, taking long, fluid steps instead of the sedate, measured walk of a lady.

Cutter’s glance briefly touched on the two troopers with firebrands heading toward the
jacals.
It was standard procedure to torch the brush-thatched dwellings of the Apache, to bum, their homes and supplies, thus driving them onto the reservations. Cutter took note of their actions merely as a detached observance that orders were being followed.

. “What are they doing?” Hannah demanded when she saw the first of the colored soldiers approach a wickiup, a torch in his hand.

“Setting fire to the huts.” His tone dismissed the activity as being of minor significance.

“No!” Her protest was strident and angry as she glared at him. “You have to stop them. You can’t let them do it!”

A frown darkened his face, and deepened as she broke into a run to go stop the soldiers herself. Her long, muscled legs flashed with a sheen of golden bronze, the side-slash of the buckskin skirt showing her bare thighs above the tall moccasins. Within a half dozen strides, he’d caught her, but she was stronger than he’d expected and Cutter found that he had his hands full trying to keep her from breaking free.

“Mrs. Wade. Hannah!” He was harsh with her as she twisted and strained to break loose, fighting him with a wildness that was difficult to contain. “We have orders to bum them!”

Beyond them, flames crackled, catching hungrily at the dry brush thatching the dome-shaped native huts. Within seconds, the smell of smoke stung their nostrils. She suddenly abandoned her resistance to clutch at him.

“You’ve got to stop them!” She appealed again for his help, raw desperation in her expression. “All our
food, everything is in there! You can’t bum us out again!”

“Hannah, stop it. Stop it!” Understanding was a cold weight in his stomach. “You aren’t one of them! You aren’t an Apache!” Cutter shook her with jarring roughness and watched the comprehension finally dawn in her eyes.

All the fight left her as Hannah bent her head down and away from him. She felt lost and confused, caught somewhere in the limbo between what she was and what she had been. She had forgotten how to act, how to walk, what to think, what to say. It was a long way from being an Apache woman to being an officer’s lady. The things that bad happened to her suddenly made Hannah doubt that she could be the same person again.

Quietly he asked, “How about some of that coffee now, Mrs. Wade?”

She felt the light pressure of his hands through the buckskin sleeves covering her upper arms; a faint throbbing remained where they had gripped her moments ago. Her glance lifted from the brass buttons of his uniform to his rough-hewn features, the look of his blue eyes keenly measuring.

“I’d like that fine,” she agreed quietly to his second invitation for coffee. Her composure regained, she turned from him to walk toward the campfire.

A self-consciousness stayed with her, not allowing her to be completely at ease with her escorting officer. At the fire, Hannah sank gracefully to her knees, rocking back to sit on her heels in a position that had become natural to her over the past months. It was only when Cutter brought her a tin mug of coffee and squatted low, balancing on the balls of his feet, that she realized it was unladylike to sit on the ground. But it seemed pointless to move now.

She peered at him across the lip of her cup, wondering
what he must be thinking of her. Nothing showed in his face, deep sun-creases splaying from the outer corners of his eyes. Beyond him, smoke billowed as fine engulfed the nearest wickiup. The sight caught her glance and held it for long seconds until she became aware of Cutter watching her.

“Almost two months ago, the Mexican army attacked the
rancheria.”
She stared into the bitter black brew that was camp coffee, old grounds boiled and boiled until only acid and oil remained to flavor the water. “They burned everything . . . our winter food, our blankets and clothing, weapons, baskets, pottery— everything. Even the mutilated bodies of some of our dead.” She spoke in the personal pronoun again. At the time, she had been one of them; the incident had happened to her. “They—the soldiers slaughtered everything in sight, butchering like animals. The stench of the place after they’d gone . . . the death smell—“ Hannah shuddered in remembrance.

“I see.” It was a taut but noncommital response.

And the vagueness of it flashed through Hannah like a white-hot spark through kindling. “Do you?” she challenged suddenly. “When I saw those uniforms, I went running to them, certain that at last I would be saved. But all they wanted to do was kill—women, children, white, Apache; they didn’t care.” The burst of anger was quickly spent, and she lowered her gaze again to the battered tin mug and her work-roughened

“And they tried to kill you,” Cutter guessed.

“Yes.” She sighed and passed a hand in front of her eyes, trying to free herself from that remembered terror. “I got away and hid. They chased us for days. We had nothing to eat and nothing to keep us warm.”

“It’s over now,” he said.

“Yes.” Hannah pressed a hand to her forehead. “I’ve waited so long.” A sob was in her throat and her eyes
were full of tears, but she kept both, choked down, along with her fear that maybe it was too long.

“Something kept telling me you’d make it, Mrs. Wade.” He directness of Cutter’s gaze when she straightened was oddly soothing, “It’s hard to break a strong spirit,” After taking a last swallow from his coffee cup, he emptied the dregs in the sand and pushed himself to his feet. “We’ll be pulling out in an hour or so to head back to the fort with our prisoners. We’re short of mounts and equipment, so we’ll be using the Apache ponies. If you don’t object, I’ll assign one to you.”

“Not at all, Captain. By now, I’m used to riding them.”

All the surrounding wickiups were ablaze, and the troopers were returning to the
rancheria
hi pairs. Hannah watched Cutter walk back to the cookfire, where a colored soldier was scraping green mold off a slab of bacon. He left the tin mug with the cook as he went on to confer with his subordinates and see to the last details of the operation. Hannah was glad of these minutes alone to adjust to this sudden change of circumstances and the subsequent conflict of identity. It had all happened so fast.

An hour later, Hannah was sitting astride a sand brown-and-white pinto and holding the reins. No sidesaddle, no voluminous tiding skirt for her now. She had vaulted agilely onto the horse’s back, unaided. It had not occurred to her to wait for assistance in mounting.

The split sides of the buckskin skirt showed the sun-browned skin of her knees and thighs, lean-muscled and firm. During the long months she’d lived with the Apache, Hannah had lost much of the consciousness of her body. It didn’t come back until she saw the way the young lieutenant was staring at her legs. With a heated remembrance, she recalled that in
civilized society, only loose women showed their limbs. In her situation, though, there was little she could do about it. Hannah sat straighter on the paint horse and held her head a little higher.

Cutter came riding up from the rear of the split column and checked his horse when he neared Hannah, bringing it to a side-dancing halt, “Would you care to. ride with me, Mrs. Wade?”

“Yes, thank you.” She kicked her horse forward with a moccasined heel, usurping the lieutenant’s place and leaving him to ride with the sergeant.

The Apache scouts formed a scattered, advance wedge ahead of the column. Cutter raised his hand and signaled the troops to move out. “Column,, ho!” came the sergeant’s shout, the words drawn out in the familiar rhythm of army commands. All around them were the burnt-out shells of the
rancheria
buildings, their timbers still smoldering and smoking.

With their Apache captives on foot, the very young and the very old alike, their pace was necessarily slow. The severely wounded among them were transported on travois. Hannah tried not to think about the men, women, and children being herded like animals in the middle of the column. Her own treatment at their hands had not always been humane. But she wanted to forget that, and she wanted to forget them. She wanted to blot the past months out of her memory. She wanted to stop this warring ambivalence.

“At this pace, I’m afraid we won’t make it to the fort until midday tomorrow.” The campaign hat was pulled low on Cutter’s forehead, the wide brim shading his rough, angular profile. “I’m sorry I can’t spare a detachment of men to escort you back ahead of the column.”

“I understand, Captain.” She almost welcomed the delay, and wasn’t sure why.

That night they bivouacked near the mouth of Hell’s
Canyon on the Gila River. All remaining supplies were used to fill the empty bellies of soldier and prisoner alike. When it came time to distribute the food among the Apache captives, Hannah accompanied the Negro cook and his helper. The black sergeant named Hooker stayed nearby with half a dozen soldiers standing guard. As the food was dished out, she looked to see which members of the band had been caught and who had escaped. Gatita was there,
Go-yath-kkta
strapped to the cradleboard on her back. She gave Hannah a stony-faced look and went on. “He isn’t here.”

Hannah stiffened when Cutter spoke mere inches behind her. His words caused a break in her rhythm as she spooned beans onto a com tortilla. She didn’t pretend ignorance of his meaning, nor protest when he motioned for one of the troopers to take her place in the chow line, dispensing the meager servings.

His hand cupped her elbow as he guided her out of the prisoner encampment toward the glowing heat of a fire beneath the stark cottonwood skeletons. “Lutero escaped.” Cutter was more specific in his statement. “He wasn’t one of the Apaches we killed in this morning’s attack either.”

“You know, don’t you? How?” Her voice was low, but her face was smooth.

“The scouts interrogated some of the prisoners. They told that Lutero had taken you as his woman,” he stated. “I don’t think you could have kept it a secret, Mrs. Wade. That wouldn’t be like you.”

“But what am I, Captain?” she mused wryly.

“A woman who survived what few could.”

“Thank you.” Darkness enfolded them as they walked. Her steps slowed as her gaze turned to the night’s shadows that surrounded them, and Hannah realized that this experience, this ordeal would never
allow her to feel completely secure again. She stopped underneath the cottonwoods; overhead, their branches made a web against the night sky.