Tormented by flies around the healing bullet wound, despite the juniper pitch with which Sundance had smeared it, Eagle hobbled as he ascended the steep slope of the Mogollon rim. But it was cooler here; at this altitude, the trees were bigger, juniper giving way occasionally to pine; the harsh sacaton yielded to nutritious grama, on which Eagle gorged himself; sometimes there was running water, bubbling springs or flowing streams. In these, Sundance and Herta von Markau drank their fill and, naked, let the current wash and cool their scraped, dusty, exhausted bodies.
Three days it had taken them to gain the Mogollons; and slowly the girl was coming out of shock. But, Sundance thought, maybe it would have been better if she hadn’t. She had recovered physically, but tortured by regret, she was in mental agony. As she lay resting on a rock, after a swim in a stream, while Sundance broiled a wild turkey he had brought down with an arrow, she drew the jacket of the vaquero outfit around her, shivered, and covered her face with her hands. “Sundance.” Her voice was muffled.
“Yes.” He fed the fire.
“How can I ever forgive myself?”
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You didn’t know. You couldn’t know about what kind of country this is, you’d never met a man like Gannon. You made a mistake, but von Markau made some, too. The first was buying you like a piece of property—he told me about that, how he paid your family’s debts—and expecting your love and loyalty for that. The second was bringing you to Arizona with him. The third was disobeying me, breaking out that cognac; if he hadn’t, Gannon would never have caught us off guard. What neither one of you knew is that this is a country that doesn’t allow you even one mistake.”
“Still, I did betray him. And now he is dead. A lot of men are.”
“People die all the time in Arizona; death is a part of this country, like the mountains, the deserts. The Apaches mourn their dead and never speak their names again, and sometimes even burn their villages. After death, they wipe out everything, make a fresh start. Out here, it’s the only way to survive. Regret won’t bring von Markau back; but the lesson you’ve learned may save somebody else someday. Come and eat; we’ve got a long way to travel before the sun goes down.”
She looked at him strangely as she sat down across the fire from him. “I have never met a man like you, either,” she said. “Thank you for your kindness. Kindness is not something I have come to expect from men. All my life, I have only been something men wanted, felt they had to have, not someone to whom they should be kind. Perhaps that made me bitter, perhaps I wanted to get revenge on them ...” She touched her hair. “I feel better, now.”
And after that, she began to come to life again. They rode on that afternoon, camped that night. The next day, they found Cochise.
Or rather, his scouts, as Sundance had expected, found them. When Sundance awakened at daybreak, shivering from the cold, he sat up to look straight into the eyes of an Apache hunkered over him, rifle pointed at him. Three more squatted in a circle all around them.
“So you are awake,” the Apache said. “An Indian with yellow hair. And a white-eye woman. What is this?”
He betrayed no surprise when Sundance answered in fluent Chiricahua. “My name is Sundance, of the Cheyennes; but I am also an adopted Chiricahua. Cochise is my godfather, and I have news for him, bad news, of Uklenni and Uklenni’s people, and I would ask you to take me to him.”
“Sundance.” The Apache considered. “I think I have heard of you. Inju. Good. On your feet. We’ll take you to Cochise. But be very careful, do not make one wrong move.”
They crested a ridge, pine-clad and grassy, rode down a long, broken slope into a deep basin. There smokes, a dozen of them, curled skyward in thin, steady columns. In a fold by a creek on the basin floor, they found therancheria, the Apache village.
As they rounded a ridge and it came in sight, Sundance drew in a long breath. It was almost like coming home.
The camp was a big one, the Chiricahuas and the Tontos and Mescaleros having come together. Sundance recognized the brush shelters of the first two bands, rude domes of limbs and foliage over which cloth and deerhides had been thrown to help cut the wind, spread out along the stream. Farther away were the teepees of the Mescaleros, who, ranging out onto the plains, had adopted that sort of shelter from the buffalo tribes. Three hundred people, maybe more, Sundance judged, as Choddi—Antelope—the chief of the patrol, led them into the village. Not many men were present; they hunted or scouted or, perhaps, even raided somewhere far enough not to draw down revenge upon the rancheria. Women were everywhere, working hard, dressed in deerskins or in cloth bought in trade, their garments voluminous, modest. The smokes came from great pits in which mescal cooked; it was the staple food of the tribe. Leaves, stalks, and the central bulb, like a huge onion, were all baked together in the pits for three days, producing a sweet gluey mixture which the Apaches loved, and which they dried in sheets. Other women tended small cornfields, and still others, Sundance knew, would be on the mountainsides, digging wild potatoes and gathering piñon nuts, acorns, black walnuts, grass seeds, nopal fruit, and sunflower seeds which they would combine with mesquite beans to make a rich bread. Weavers were at work, too, making the tightly woven, superb Apache basketry. A few men were busy sewing buckskin; that was a peculiarity of the tribe; the men were all expert tailors, sewed beautifully. Some others gambled, tossing painted sticks in the game of Tze-chis; and children, mostly naked, were everywhere, the boys practicing throwing lances, the girls playing with dolls or helping their mothers gather firewood.
Choddi called out as they entered the village. Everyone looked up, all activity ceased. The people crowded forward, staring curiously at the strange spectacle: an Apache with yellow hair and a beautiful white woman in Mexican clothes mounted on an appaloosa stallion. They chattered in wonder, and the children stood open-mouthed. Sundance searched for familiar faces in the crowd, saw none.
Choddi gestured to him to stop the stallion. Sundance, walking beside Eagle, halted him with a touch. Now the crowd moved in closer, and one woman with a strange deformity reached out, touched Herta von Markau’s boot.
Herta shrank back. “Sundance,” she whispered, “what happened to her?”
Sundance looked at the woman. “She was caught in adultery,” he said flatly. “Her husband cut off the end of her nose.”
“Oh,” Herta said faintly and, shuddering, put one hand over her face.
Then a hush fell over the crowd. It parted, and Sundance looked around. People made way for a tall, wide-shouldered man with iron-gray hair. He wore a buckskin shirt, loin cloth, leggings, some hawk’s plumage in the band bound around his head. A Colt revolver was strapped around his waist. He came forward, square-faced, massive, halted before Sundance, legs spraddled. Black eyes probed Sundance’s face, ranged over the scarred, coppery body.
They stood like that for a long moment, looking at one another.
“My father,” Sundance said softly.
The hard face broke; thin lips smiled. Suddenly the eyes gleamed with pleasure. “My son. It is good to see you.” Then Cochise, chief of the Chiricahuas, stepped forward and embraced Jim Sundance.
Cochise had two wives. They led Herta von Markau off to another house, after spreading food before Cochise and Sundance in the chief’s dwelling. The dome-shaped place smelled of smoke and grease and drying mesquite and juniper. The two men sat cross-legged opposite each other, and Cochise listened without speaking while Sundance talked. With each minute that passed, the Apache’s face grew more stern and dour.
Then Sundance had finished. Cochise tamped a pipe, lit it. “It was bad for you and Uklenni to go after the treasure without first coming to me. But, no matter; what is done is done. Uklenni should not have drunk the tiswin,either.”
He paused. “For the treasure, I care nothing. I well know the value of a white man’s dollar; I have done business with them, cutting wood for the fort at Bowie and being paid for it. But I know much else about the white man, too. If, as you say, this is worth more dollars than we can imagine, it is bad, bad medicine. If we had it, we could not sell it. They would say, you Goddam dirty Injun sonofabitch” and here he lapsed into English, mockingly,“this belongs to us. You stole it, we’ll put you in jail and hang you. The more valuable it is, the more ways they would find to kill Indians for it. I say the treasure is well out of our country; I do not want it.”
Sundance nodded.
“Of course,” Cochise said, “you are half white. If we took it, maybe you could sell it for us.”
Sundance laughed bitterly. “Father, I am half Indian, too. They would say, you Goddam dirty half breed sonofabitch, and then it would be the same thing.” He sobered. “But if I can take the treasure, I will get money which I will pay to the people in the council of the Grandfather in Washington. Money that will make the Grandfather’s heart good toward the Tenneh.”
Cochise spat into the fire. “Nothing makes the Grandfather’s heart good but money, does it? What kind of man is he, what sort of heart does he have?” Then he said harshly. “I would not pay the Grandfather anything. He has sent his man Colyer to me, we bargain. But if I must pay to bargain with the Grandfather—”
“You do not understand,” Sundance said.
“And you don’t, either. You do not understand what it is to be a chief, hold so much responsibility in your hand. Colyer comes to me, he says: ‘Cochise, we will give you the Dragoons and Huachucas for your own land. But you must not raid the Americans. We do not care how much you raid the Mexicans if you leave the Americans alone.’ And now, if I kill fifteen Americans—”
“Who killed fifteen Chiricahuas,” Sundance said harshly.
“Who should not have gone with you before talking to me. Who should not have drunk the tiswin. Who are dead and cannot be brought back.” Cochise gestured. “Look,” he said. “We camp with the Tontos and the Mescaleros. They are never safe from the Army, they live in fear. We Chiricahuas are stronger, fiercer, than they, and so the white-eyes bargain with us. The Tontos and the Mescaleros have nothing; we have the Dragoons and Huachucas, anyhow ...”
“What you’re saying,” Sundance rasped, “is that you don’t want to give me any men.”
“I’m saying,” Cochise told him, “that we have a chance to hold our land. Everything in me cries out for vengeance for Uklenni and the others. But I am a chief, and that is not an easy thing to be. I must balance one thing against another. This is something the Chiricahuas must stay out of.”
Sundance, understanding, but astounded by Cochise’s self-control, sat up straight. “All right,” he said. “This is the country of the Tontos, anyhow. I will go to them.”
“It’ll do you no good. They listen to me. I am trying to make peace for them also, save some land for them. I will tell them not to go with you. And the Mescaleros, too. Not now. Not right at this moment. It would turn over all our bargaining with the man Colyer from the Grandfather. It is not our medicine; it is white man’s medicine.” He laid down his pipe, looked at Sundance, grinned. “You see,” he said, “there is nothing I can do. Our people talk too much, drink too much, brag too much, and if we killed fifteen white men everyone would know it. But I do not drink or talk or brag too much, and neither do you. Suppose we two, only we, went on a hunt. And came back from it and said nothing.”
Sundance stared at him. “Father,” he whispered, “do you mean—?”
Cochise’s grin broadened. “Your father was my brother. Always you have been my son, and my heart is good for you.” He stood up. “Besides, being a chief and talking much is hard on the nerves. Sometimes a man needs excitement. And I did not get to be chief of the Chiricahuas because I am so gentle and such an old woman. Do you understand? Sundance, it has been long since we hunted together. I think we should hunt again.”
Sundance looked at him in admiration. “The two of us? Against fifteen?”
Cochise grinned. “Without help, you’d have gone alone, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” Sundance said.
“Then we’ve cut the odds by half.” Cochise laughed. “Now go rest. I’ve had a lodge prepared for you and your woman. Meanwhile, I’ll send out scouts to cut their trail. When I have news, I’ll let you know, and you and I will hunt together once again. And what game we kill, no one shall know but us.”
It does not take long to make an Apache brush house; this one was brand new, spread with robes and bedding, food provided; venison, mescal, mesquite bread. When Sundance entered it, she was waiting, sitting cross-legged on a deerskin, her face grave. “They say that I am your woman.”
“No,” Sundance said. “I already have a woman, with the Cheyennes.”
Herta von Markau took off the sombrero, laid it aside, began to smooth her hair with a brush made from sacaton stems. It glistened as she worked the kinks from its dark lustiness. “Of course,” she said. “And you would not want to touch me anyhow, not after what I did.”
Sundance looked at her. “I told you. It was everyone’s mistake.”
“If I were an Apache, I would have my nose cut off.” She laid the brush aside. “And would deserve it. Christus knows, I would. And yet . . . suppose . . . suppose I had met you before I met Walther. Suppose I had met the one kind man I have ever known. I can’t get that out of my mind. If I had ever met a man really kind to me, in time—” Her voice harshened. “Sundance, you’re lucky you’re not a beautiful woman. Your life is simple.”
Sundance sat down opposite her. He said: “You’re mixed up already. I don’t want to mix you up worse.”
Herta looked down at the hide on which she sat. “Maybe it wouldn’t mix me up. Maybe it would straighten me out. I know it’s shameless, with Walther dead, and it my fault, but . . .” Her voice broke. “I don’t seem to be able to grieve for him anymore. He bought me like a cow at market, commanded me to love him, and I tried and . . . couldn’t. And now ...” She raised her head, eyes shining. “I would like to do one thing in my life,” she whispered, “that was right, and right because I knew it was. I would like to carry one memory out of here with me to offset all the rest.”
And then she came to him. “Jim,” she said. “Jim, please.”
Sundance looked into eyes that begged him. But that was not the point. The point was that he wanted her. At least for now. Maybe it would be bad for her or both of them, maybe good; he did not know. But for right now, this moment . . .
He pushed her away, turned, pulled down the deerhide flap that closed the door. Then he turned again. Her face shone in the dimness. She lay back on the deerskin, and her hands went to the buttons of the shirt . . .
Later, he knew that it had been good for her, purged her of something, maybe tension. She clung to him as they both dressed. Then he said, “Let’s walk around. I’ll be riding tomorrow, maybe. Cochise and I are going hunting.”
“Hunting?” Her voice echoed disbelief.
“Hunting,” Sundance said. “You’ll be here while I’m gone, so you’d better learn what’s expected of you. Come on.”
Dressed again, but this time with Herta in a simple buckskin skirt that Cochise’s wives had given her instead of the vaquero outfit, they strolled around the camp.
“The first thing to learn about Apaches,” Sundance said, “is that they never lie to one another and never steal from one another. They always keep their word and expect other people to do so, too. That’s why they’ve had trouble ever since the Spaniards came.”
Cooking fires curled up from before the wikiups and the teepees. Children ran and laughed; from inside one lodge came the sound of chanting. “Medicine man,” said Sundance. “Somebody’s sick in there. He’ll use all the herbs and roots he knows of, and all the chants and prayers. And if they die, still, he’ll accuse some poor old woman of witchcraft, and if he can make it stick, they might burn her or stone her to death.”
“Ghastly,” Herta whispered.
Sundance’s mouth twisted. “Yeah. Did you ever hear of a girl called Joan of Arc?”
“I have heard so many horrible things about Apaches ...”
“All true,” said Sundance.
“Killing babies . . .”
“Yes. Kill all children too small to travel, when they take captives. Those big enough to keep up, they spare, adopt into the tribe. Same thing with women. They learned their lesson well, learned it from the Spaniards and the Mexicans—and the Americans. You know about the scalp bounties?”
“No.”
“Thirty years ago, Mexico put a bounty on Apache scalps. Men, women, children, it made no difference. Hunters went out after ’em. As a matter of fact, a lot of Mexicans died. You can’t tell one black scalp from another. But the Apaches learned from that. And the pinole feasts.”
“The what?”
“Pinole feasts. Pinole is a mush made from ground corn. The Apaches love it. The Mexicans, and the Americans, too, used to invite them to love feasts, served all the pinole they could eat. One little trick: the hosts put strychnine in the pinole. Poisoned dozens, hundreds, of Apaches at a time, before the Indians caught on.”
“How ghastly,” Herta breathed.
“Well, it taught the Apaches another lesson.” Sundance paused, looked around the village. “They’re no better, no worse, than other people. They do unto others as others would do unto them. They value their women, chastity is important to them. You won’t find Apache whores hanging around trading posts. But, yes. They’re tough and mean. This is a tough land, a mean one; you know that by now.”
They walked up a hillside; there, in the fading light, women still attacked the mescal plants. They stripped away the thorn-hooked, fleshy leaves, chopped off the stalks. Then they severed the body of the plant from its roots with pointed sticks, which they drove in with hatchets. The bulb, halfway between a cabbage and an onion, that was left, they carried down the hill. “Everyone works in an Apache camp,” Sundance said. “The men hunt, raid, make war. The women gather food. In this society, it takes a lot of work to stay alive. Nobody lives off of anyone else, unless he’s old or sick or crippled. And they worship all the Gods. If they kill a Christian, they’ll take his crucifix and wear it. No point in angering anybody. But the Mountain Gods, the Kan—they’re very powerful. You ought to see the ceremony. A great dance, goes on for days. The masks they wear are fantastic. The Apaches are a very religious, superstitious people. When Uklenni and I hunted the bear, we always had to be careful to call him Old Man Bear. A term of respect. If you’re not respectful, you lose your luck.”
They swung back through the camp, paused to watch a Mescalero woman adjust the smokeflaps of her teepee. “Anyhow,” Sundance said, “one thing about being an Indian. You’re never alone and helpless.”
“The whole tribe, it’s one big family?”
“Yes,” said Sundance.
“Nobody ever tries to get rich off of anybody else?”
“They don’t even understand the idea,” Sundance said. “How can you cheat your brother?” He grinned. “Still, it gets tricky sometimes. An Apache husband must never meet his mother-in-law face to face. A mean mother-in-law can drive a man out of his mind, chase him all over the country, to keep from breaking that rule. But they say that if you never have to talk to your mother-in-law or even look at her, your marriage is happier.”
Herta laughed bitterly. “As a woman once married, that I can understand.”
Then they were back in the brush shelter built for them. Outside, it was nearly dark.
“Jim,” said Herta. Her eyes were enormous, shining in the murky light.
Sundance looked at her. “Yes.” She pulled the deerskin dress over her head. Her body gleamed in the dusk. “I am still your woman,” she whispered. “For a little while, anyhow.”