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I stared at it in dismay. Were we expected to crawl up that steep, rocky cliff face with nothing but a thin rope to support us?
I turned to Julio, intending to make some protest, but he had already seized the dangling end of the rope, and now, using his feet for leverage against the sheer wall of rock, he began to clamber up it with surprising agility.
No sooner had he disappeared into what, from here, seemed no more than a tiny, dark-shadowed cleft, than Lucas Cord came down, the rope sliding between his gloved hands.
Without a word to me he and the other men began immediately to loop the end of the rope around one of the saddlebags, which Julio then hauled up. I stood to one side with the two other women, trying to hide the fact that I was getting angrier and angrier by the minute.
I won’t go up that ridiculous rope! If my hands were to slip… I shuddered inwardly, trying not to think of it. Already my palms had begun to feel damp with sweat, and although I despised myself for cowardice, I had never cared for great heights.
The silver was hauled up first, the heavy saddlebags bumping against the face of the mountain. Then our food and supplies, including the hides and meat of the deer and bear that the men had shot.
The men went up next, just as easily as Julio had done. The women motioned to me politely, indicating that I might go first, but I shook my head just as politely. I thought that Lucas Cord raised a sarcastic eyebrow, but he said nothing except to give the women what was obviously some advice, in Apache. I watched them both clamber up with amazing ease, giggling as if it was some kind of amusing game to them.
Why did I have to be left here with him? I thought he sensed my fear and gloated at it; even his next words seemed to carry an undertone of irony.
“It is your turn, little sister. You ain’t afraid, are you?”
“Of course I’m not afraid!” I said sharply. “But what are you going to do about the horses? How do you intend to get them up there?”
I think he knew I was procrastinating. The cleft in his cheek deepened, and he narrowed his eyes at me thoughtfully.
“You worried about those two sorry-lookin’ nags? Didn’t think you’d be so softhearted.”
Why did he always succeed in making me angry? I had the feeling he was taunting me.
“You’re surely not going to…”
“Thought about butchering them for the meat.” Catching my horrified look, he shrugged. “But if it upsets you, we could leave them right here. These are wild ponies. They’ll find food for themselves until the others get ready to leave.”
“How casual you are about life, whether it’s animal or human! Those poor beasts…”
“Can look after themselves fine, like I just told you. An’ if you don’t get started I’m goin’ to have to tie one end of that rope around your waist an’ haul you up like one of them sacks!”
The threatening step he took towards me made me back away. Looking back, I think it was only my anger that gave me the courage to scale that cliff face, not daring to look down. Lucas offered me his gloves, but I would not accept them. My palms carried rope burns for a few days afterwards, and I collected bruises on my knees and hips from bumping against sharp rocks as I pulled myself upward, trying to remember how the others had done it. I was never more relieved than when I felt Julio’s strong hands close around my wrists as he lifted me up onto a rocky shelf that widened into a cave.
“Come, nidee. We go this way.”
With my knees still shaking I followed Julio around a sharp bend, and saw light at the other end of what was not actually a cave, but a tunnellike fault in the mountain.
No wonder they called this the hidden valley! I could understand why it would be almost impossible to find, and how even one man, with enough ammunition, could hold off a whole army of attackers.
“My brother found this place when he came into the mountains alone to seek his medicine dream,” Julio told me. “He saw a mountain goat seem to disappear and followed it, and that was how he came upon the valley. See, nidee? All around are the sides of the mountain, like walls. It is as if the mountains were split in the middle, to make this place.”
I looked around wonderingly after we had emerged again into the daylight, and began to scramble down a rocky slope into a meadow with grama grass growing waist-high.
I thought I could see for miles ahead; the valley appeared narrow at this end, but I could see where it began to widen further on. The part I could see to my right was more rocky and mountainous, with enormous boulders scattered about as if they had rolled down the cliff many centuries ago, when perhaps a gigantic earthquake or some other upheaval of nature had created this natural valley. “It’s beautiful!” I said to Julio, and he grunted with pride.
“But you have seen so little, yet. Wait until we travel farther, and then you will see! There is plenty of water here, and there are cattle and horses too. They do well here, and the herds grow, but I tell you it was a very difficult task to get them in here at the beginning!”
I thought of Lucas, who would not be troubled to bring those poor horses who had carried the silver all the way up here into the valley, and my lips tightened with indignation. And almost at the same time, he caught up with us.
The Apache warriors who had accompanied us here had disappeared, along with their women, and I was suddenly all too conscious of the fact that I was alone with my two adopted “brothers.” I told myself angrily that I could almost see Julio in the role, perhaps, but certainly not Lucas.
“I suppose we have to walk again?” I said in a voice that had hardened instinctively, now that he had appeared.
I looked at Julio wh
en I spoke, but it was Lucas who answered my question. “There are horses a few miles up ahead, in a small corral. Ramon always sees that they are kept here in case they should be needed.”
