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the cliff, ran through the center of it. It had been the home of the Apaches for a long time, although Little Bird told me, in a moment of rare confidence, that they had to move away in the winter, the time they called Ghost Face. Still they had planted corn here, and other herbs and shrubs they used for food. It might have been a pleasant, peaceful place if I did not remember that the war chief Victorio had stayed here on occasion, and from here bloody raids had been made on stagecoaches and unsuspecting white settlers.
But I told myself firmly that I would not think of that. I was here as a guest of sorts, and the Apaches on their home grounds were a different people from the Apache warriors who went to war with painted faces.
The men had gone to the ceremonial sweat lodge—a kind of Turkish bath—and late in the evening some of the women, Little Bird and I among them, went to bathe in a secluded, tree-shaded portion of the stream. I could almost have imagined we were in the bathing pool of the maharajah’s harem at Jhanpur, from the giggling and teasing chatter. The women washed their hair with a form of soap they made from the yucca cactus, and combed it through with makeshift combs fashioned from bone or cactus spines.
My hair, as always, hung sleek and heavy when it was wet. I combed it with the comb that Little Bird loaned me, her manner more friendly than usual, and let it hang loose until it was dry, tying a narrow strip of buckskin around my forehead to keep the loose strands out of my eyes.
“Look in the still water,” Little Bird told me, and giggled. I had not looked in a mirror since I was captured, and my reflection in the small pool made me stare in disbelief. I could hardly recognize myself! I might have been an Apache woman, except for my blue eyes, and in the rapidly fading light even they looked dark. My skin had tanned in the sun and turned almost brown. I had stopped peeling from sunburn. In the high-necked, long-sleeved blouse of an Apache squaw, my hair parted in the center, I looked like a brown-skinned Amazon.
Where was the dowdy, frowning girl with spectacles tipped on her nose? Or the sophisticated woman with jewels sparkling around her throat and at her ears? I still wore my tiny sapphire ear studs, and somehow, taken with the rest of me, they looked incongruous. Impulsively I unscrewed them and handed them to Little Bird.
“A gift,” I said in Spanish. “Because you have been kind.”
For a moment she seemed confused, staring from the small, sparkling jewels I held in the palm of my hand, to my face. And then she took them, her face solemn and touched my hand.
“Gracias,” she said in Spanish, and then in Apache, in a softer voice, “nidee,” which I had learned meant sister. At that moment, we were close to being friends.
It was a pity that Lucas had to spoil the moment. He came striding towards us, his chest bare except for the small buckskin pouch that hung suspended from a rawhide cord around his neck—the medicine pouch that every Apache warrior carried with him. And why not, since he was obviously proud of his Apache blood? His wet hair glistened in the dim light, and his face was closed and unreadable. “The shaman wishes to speak with you.” Little Bird had dropped back unobtrusively, and his fingers closed around my wrist.
“Show some respect. He is an old man, but very wise. “My—” and I wondered why he hesitated before he went on, “my grandfather.”
“I have always respected those who have earned respect.” I tilted my head back and my eyes met his. “Do you think I would embarrass you?”
“How do I know what to expect of you?” His words were almost muttered, with a kind of frustration underlying them. “You’re a most unexpected woman!”
“I’m adaptable,” I said coolly, moving my wrist from his grasp. “I’m patient too. And I know my place. Shouldn’t I walk a few paces behind you? My head meekly bowed, of course. I know you would not want anyone to think you had allowed your slave any extra privileges!”
I had the satisfaction of seeing him scowl down at me, his eyes puzzled. But “Watch your tongue…” was all he said to me before he turned and walked ahead of me toward the largest wickiup in the encampment.
I was horribly nervous, although I would have died rather than show it. Why did the shaman wish to speak to me? I could not understand my nervousness either. I had been presented to the Queen of England and had sailed through the whole performance without a suggestion of butterflies in my stomach! But this was not England, and as preposterous as it would have seemed to me less than a month ago, I was the prisoner of a man I despised and distrusted.
“Don’t speak first,” Lucas instructed me before we entered the conical-shaped brush dwelling. “Try to sit quietly without fidgeting until you’re spoken to.”
I could not resist letting a flash of sarcasm show in my tone. “Thank you for instructing me in the proper etiquette! Your slave will try not to disgrace you.”
He gave me one of his brooding, expressionless glances that seemed to warn me I was going too far, but he said nothing and, bending his head, he preceded me into the gloomy, firelit interior.
The old shaman seemed half asleep as we seated ourselves on either side of the doorway. For some time he neither moved nor acknowledged our presence. A fat woman who appeared to be much younger than he moved quietly about her duties in the background. His daughter? His wife? Were shamans allowed to marry? He had discarded the ceremonial buckskin headdress decorated with eagle and turkey feathers and now wore only the usual headband of an Apache warrior. His brown face seemed to be composed of seams and wrinkles, and he might have been a hundred years old. “My grandfather,” Lucas Cord had said, with that odd, tiny hesitation. Was it possible that this was Elena Kordes’s father? The Apache chief who had made a young Spanish woman captive his wife?
I studied the old man from beneath my lowered lashes, and after a short time I received the distinct impression that he was doing the same thing.
“So—you are the one.” The words, spoken in rusty Spanish, were uttered so suddenly that I almost jumped. The old fox! So he had been watching me after all. I raised my eyes to his half-open ones, but did not speak. He had made a statement; what was there to say?
We regarded each other, and after a few seconds had passed the old man’s eyes opened fully. He looked at Lucas, I thought. It was difficult to tell, with the fire between us.
“Does she speak, or is she afraid to do so?”
I compressed my lips together as Lucas answered him, his tone caustic.
“She speaks too much sometimes, oh my grandfather. And I do not think she is afraid.”
The old man was nodding, turning his eyes back to me. “That is good. You do not have the look of a woman who is afraid. Sometimes my grandson is not as wise as he thinks he is. When I first saw you, the thought came to me—this is one of the rare women who listens, and observes; and learns what from she sees. I have seen for myself how quickly you have learned our ways. I told myself, perhaps the mind and the heart of this woman are as open and honest as were those of her father, who came one day to this camp alone, with no fear, because, he said, he would understand the Apache.” The old man nodded again, as if it pleased him to turn his thoughts backwards. “Your father was the only white man I have called siqiàsn—brother. And as long as he lived he was a true blood brother to the Apache.” The old, rheumy eyes seemed to search my face, “You understand now why I have called you here?” I did not understand—not yet, not quite. But my father, blood brother to the same savage, merciless Indians who had attacked the stagecoach, murdered and tortured, and then had carried me off?
I could see that the shaman expected me to answer him. I could think of nothing to say except, shaking my head, “No, I am not certain if I understand or not. Did you know who I was then? From the beginning?”
“Ah, ah!” Sitting cross-legged, the old man began to rock very slightly back and forth, as if it helped him to think. “Now I have made you curious. That is good. Your curiosity will make you speak out and ask questions, where before you were doubtful, you wondered, why has this old man sent for me? What kind of things will he ask me? You are your father’s daughter, his only child from across the great water. That is why you are here.” He paused and I leaned forward, but he raised one hand in a somehow imperious gesture.
“I see many questions in your eyes, but you will ask them later, those that I have not already answered. You are wondering if the warriors who first brought you as a captive to their camp were sent to look for you. No. It was a raiding party. For many days the young men had watched the coach go by and they learned how many soldiers usually guarded it, how many guns they carried. Sometimes the tracks left by the wheels were deeper than on other days. They knew that on such days silver was carried in a box hidden at the back. My daughter, it was by chance you were on the coach our young warriors captured. Or perhaps it was one of those things that was meant to happen, who knows?” His eyes turned for a moment on Lucas, sitting silent and cross-legged; his face still without expression.
