THE STEEP-WALLED SIDES OF THE ARROYO PROVIDED A respite from the hot, stinging wind, laden with the gritty dust it churned up and blew across the barren and broken land, Hannah, sagged on the-horse, relieved to be sheltered from the whip of the wind lashing her sore and festering skin.
Her fingers were twisted into the horse’s dingy white mane, her wrists still tied. Her head drooped forward, bobbing from side to side in rhythm with the walking horse, matching the swing of its spotted face. She rode Lutero’s spotted pony. The bay had quit on her about midmorning, stumbling to its knees and collapsing. Nothing in its soft, grain-fed life had conditioned the once-flashy bay gelding for this ordeal.
But Lutero had pulled Hannah clear of the fallen horse, then mounted it and forced it onto its feet. He rode the sweat and dirt-caked horse now, always pushing it farther than it believed it could go. Hannah understood that feeling. Many times over the last three days she had reached the limits of her endurance and gone beyond them. It would be so easy to fall off the horse and simply die—and it was so much harder to stay on. The rare times she was capable of stringing thoughts together, Hannah wondered at all she had endured. Last night, he’d come to her again while the nauseating taste of that raw animal organ and her own vomit were fresh in her mouth. She had been as powerless as the first time. Not satisfied, Lutero had assaulted her twice more, but Hannah had retreated into that corner of her mind that disassociated Itself from her body.
A rock defile marked the beginning of the arroyo, which was narrow and strewn with boulders. Ahead of Hannah, the bay horse stumbled over the rough ground and the heavy hand on its reins jerked on the bit, keeping the staggering gelding on its feet. If there was a single thought that kept Hannah going, beyond the sheer will to survive, it was the certainty that there must be an end to all this. It couldn’t last forever.
The narrow trail led up to a high mesa, steep bluffs rising on three sides. Its long top rolled in smooth dips and swells, covered with grass and sage and a scattering of scrub trees. Hannah’s pony broke into an eager trot, its ears pricked toward some distant point, but its desire for haste was hampered by the flagging bay to whose black tail it was tied. At an angle, it trotted forward, pulling the bay’s tail around its haunches and hurrying its pace. The bay horse labored under its load, carrying not only Lutero but also the carcass of a deer, which had provided Hannah’s meal the previous evening.
“Hoh-shuh, hoh-shuh,” Lutero murmured to the spotted horse, the low, firm tone quieting it.
It slowed to match the bay’s gait but didn’t drop behind, its head bobbing alongside the dust-streaked haunches. The wind cut into them again and threw a haze over everything atop the plateau. Hannah made herself as small as possible astride the horse to lessen the sting of the wind-blown dust. With her mind and senses dulled by abuse, she rode on, indifferent to her surroundings or their route through them.
A dog barked—not the shrill yip of a prairie dog, but the fierce, throaty sound of a dog. It roused Hannah sufficiently for her to make a frowning attempt to focus her gaze in its direction. A rounded hump in a clearing amidst the scrub brush took on the dome shape of the Apache jacal, thatched with the grass that grew in abundance atop this mesa so that it blended into its surroundings.
More jacks were scattered in the general area, in no discernible pattern. Children came running to meet them, while mangy dogs darted out to trot alongside the horses, barking between grinning pants. Several women appeared and one old, bent-over, and white-haired man shuffled toward them. A handful of men sat beneath a ramada. Hannah vaguely recalled Stephen mentioning Apache villages, rancherias he had called them.
As Lutero rode past rounded brush huts to one situated near the center of the cluster, the ranchcrias residents came trailing behind him, crowding around on either side of Hannah. She looked at the women, small and shapeless in buckskin tops that hung past the hips and buckskin skirts that came to mid-calf, high moccasins modestly covering the rest of their legs. Most wore their black hair in twisted coils at the nape of the neck, but the older ones let it fall in a silvered black curtain down the middle of their backs. Their expressions held loathing and disgust for Hannah, no sympathy or pity. She wanted to cry, but she didn’t, simply looking straight ahead instead.
An Apache woman stood in front of a jacal, waiting for them to ride up. She was small-built, not more than five feet tall, with a maiden’s slimness. Her hair was shining black, her eyes dark and luminous. She had the same strong-boned features as the other women, but there was a softer curve to the proud cheekbones and a straighter bridge to her nose, resulting in an uncommon beauty. A smile parted her lips as Lutero stopped the bay horse next to the ramada outside the wickiup.
He vaulted from the horse with a pantherish litheness and approached the woman with a proud, lordly bearing Some emotion gentled his fierce looks, and Hannah stared, amazed, at the warmth in his face. In low, murmured voices they exchanged private greetings; then Lutero turned to gently gude the woman to the horses so that he could show off his plunder. A chance movement briefly pulled the woman’s loose-fitting buckskin top tight and outlined her swollen stomach. She was with child, Hannah realized. This woman, was Lutero’s wife, obviously several months pregnant.
A babble of voices broke out, all speaking in that unintelligible—to her—Apache language, questions obviously being put to Lutero and answers given back that generated excitement. Although they seemed almost jubilant, about what he told them, was subjected to a variety of cruel pokes and jabs. After Lutero yanked her off the horse, she was kicked and hit, new bruises being added to those on her already battered body. Hannah shrank from the blows, but she could not elude them.
After the initial excitement of Lutero’s arrival in the rancheria cooled, the gathering, slowly dispersed. Lutero led Hannah to the ramada and tied her to an upright post.
He stood before Hannah with his wife at his side, and glowered at his captive. “This my woman, Gatita.” He gave her the Spanish name that meant “little Cat.” “You belong to her. You do what she say.”
Gatita’s luminous dark eyes were turned to her husband in respectful adoration and pride. She hardly took any notice of Hannah. When the couple moved away, Hannah leaned against the post, gratefully using its support and ignoring the painful scrape of its rough bark against the scabbing blisters on her dull red skin. The children scampered around her conducting a mock war, throwing stones and striking at her with sticks, but they quickly lost interest in the game and rushed away to something else.
Much later in the afternoon, Gatita approached Hannah, holding a gourd hollowed into a saucer. An impassive expression claimed her features as she knelt on the ground beside Hannah. A clear, gel-like substance was in the gourd dish. Without ceremony, she dipped her fingers in it and began smearing it on Hannah’s back. The first contact drew a sharp gasp of pain from her, followed almost instantly by a moan of relief at the subsequently soothing sensation.
“Medicine?” Hannah ventured to question.
“Anh, yes.” Once she had Hannah’s back thoroughly covered, Gatita untied her hands and pushed the saucer at her indicating for her to finish the task alone. Some effort was required for Gatita to push herself to her feet with the baby’s added weight changing her center of balance, but the Apache woman succeeded in doing so with a measure of grace.
As she disappeared behind the skin flap that served as a low door to the jacal, Hannah used her fingers to scoop up some of the wet, cool gel and gently rubbed it onto her sun-blistered and festering skin, massaging it over her breasts and stomach and between her chafed legs. Sandy grit clung to the gel coating, adding to the grime she’d accumulated over three days of travel, but Hannah used every bit of the natural salve.
Shortly after she finished, Gatita came out of the wickiup and crossed the ramada, a folded buckskin bundle in her small hands. She dropped it at Hannah’s feet and walked away. When Hannah unfolded the buckskin, she discovered that it was a skirt and top. They were worn thin in places, the tanned leather rank and stiff from many wearings, but she had clothes again.
