A few minutes later someone put their face through a hole in the wickiup. It was a girl of about my age. I had the fleeting impression of brown skin and glossy black hair. Eyes that flickered about, searching for something. Our gazes met for an instant. I saw her terror. Then she vanished.
My captors were frightened of me. Frightened beyond reason. Why? I was a sick girl, without weapon. It made no sense.
As I sat up, the bundle of cloth next to me began to move. Straw-colored hair emerged from below the bedding. Relief flooded me. Waldo was here. Waldo. Then I saw it was Cyril Baker and disappointment nearly choked me. The old man was blinking, his beetle eyes looking around dully.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Kit?”
“Of course I’m Kit. Where are the others?”
“They separated us.”
“That’s obvious. Why? What’s going on?”
He didn’t answer but shook his head, looking around with the same veiled gaze. Something had gone out of him. He looked stupid as an ox.
“What’s the matter? Did they hurt you? Torture you?”
He shook his head. “When we came here, I wouldn’t get off the horse.”
“What? Why?”
“I thought they were going to kill me.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“They hit me over the head with a stick. I think I must have been stunned. That’s the last thing I remember.”
“Never mind about that. Where are the others? My friends. What about my friends?”
“I don’t know.”
“Cyril, you must gather your wits,” I said slowly. “I know we are both sick—but if we are not clever we will die here. These savages will put us to death.”
“I am dying anyway.”
“Enough stupid self-pity. You can save yourself. You can help save me. Be a man, not a chick—”
“They think we are witches,” he interrupted.
“Witches! Witches? But that’s ridiculous. Maybe they think all white men are witches.”
He sat up and the blankets fell from him. I saw that he was dressed as I was, in a loose garment made from deerskin. If it wasn’t such a desperate situation, I would have laughed. He looked comical, that usually elegant man in the robes of a wild Indian.
“They do not suspect all white men, Kit. Just you and me.”
“Why?” Then suspicion struck. “How do you know?”
“I heard them talking. They think we are bewitched. Or witches. I do not understand everything they say. The meaning is clear. We are unclean. To be put to death. That’s why I didn’t get off my horse.”
Something about this struck me as odd. I looked at Mr. Baker hard.
“You’re telling me you speak Apache?” The notion was unbelievable.
“Of course not. They were talking Spanish to your aunt. She was maddened, I can tell you, Kit. Thank goodness I have a few words of the language. At least I know what they believe. At least we can prepare ourselves.”
I sat very still. I could hear more now from the world outside the wickiup. Birdsong, the trickle of running water. People were moving out there. Apaches who hated us and, possibly worse, feared us. I heard voices, nearer now.
Finally I asked, “Why us? Why you and me?”
His pale eyes looked at me scornfully. Now it was my turn to be slow.
“Don’t you know? Don’t you understand anything?”
I shook my head, though I think I knew what he was going to say. But he didn’t talk, simply held out his arm and the deerskin gown fell loose. I saw the snake had moved and my heart contracted. I hadn’t looked at my own brand for several days. Somehow, if I didn’t look, I could put it out of my mind. Now I saw my own snake had moved over my elbow. Its head had turned the other way, toward my heart. For some time I gazed at the repellent thing, too upset to think.
“The boy who captured you, he saw the brand of the snake on your arm,” Mr. Baker said. “They searched us all for a similar mark and found one on me. You and I. We are condemned, Kit. Prepare yourself. They have gone to fetch the—”
Before he could finish, two men burst into the wickiup, hollering and shouting. They were strong-limbed and each over six feet tall. I would have called them handsome, for they had fine faces, if it wasn’t for their wild air. They were both wearing hide gloves. One of them seized me by the arm and pulled me out into the open, treating me so roughly that my arm was half wrenched out of its socket. Through the pain I saw mountains, slabs of red rock, greenery, a broad stream and the thatched shelters that looked so like hairy heads. The air was fresh, mountain-clear. We must be high up, in some hidden Apache place. Indians swarmed, hair greasy, their faces smeared with ochre and daubed with war paint.
Aunt Hilda was sitting in front of a smoking fire, her hands tied behind her. By her side were Rachel, Isaac and Waldo, all of them bound hand and foot. My captor prodded me toward the fire. It was the barrel of a gun in my back. Waldo had been wrong. As I had realized last night, these Apaches had guns as well as bows and arrows. I saw a sawed-off shotgun, a Winchester rifle and a Colt as well as a couple of ancient carbines. They might be “savages,” as Waldo called them, but they were savages who knew how to use nineteenth-century weapons.
Cyril stumbled by my side, a shotgun urging him on. I remembered his unfinished words and called out to him:
“You said they were sending for someone. Who? Who are they sending for?”
“The medicine man.”
“What is a medicine man?”
“Not a doctor, obviously. A medicine man is a shaman. A priest.” He glanced at me quickly, then looked away. “We are on trial—for our lives.”