Love Forevermore (9 page)

“I guess the right man hasn’t asked me yet,” Loralee answered, very softly, and it was suddenly hard to speak, or think. His eyes, as dark as midnight, burned with an intense inner fire. She knew with sudden certainty what he was thinking, and she uttered a little sigh of contentment as he took her in his arms once more, his mouth slanting over hers in a kiss that drove every other thought, hope, or desire from her mind.

It was late when Zuniga saddled the dun and helped Loralee mount.

“I hate to see the day end,” she remarked.

“There will be other days,” Zuniga said gravely. And he knew it was true. He had never meant to become seriously involved with Loralee Warfield. He had thought only to woo her and win her and abandon her when he tired of her. She was only a white woman, after all. If and when he decided to marry, he had thought to take an Apache woman for his wife. But no more. The few hours he had spent with Loralee had sealed his fate. For him, there would be no other woman.

Zuniga was waiting for Loralee after school the following day. Her horse stood beside the dun, saddled and ready.

“Where are we going?” Loralee asked, smiling up at Zuniga.

“I want you to meet my grandfather.”

“I’d like that.”

They rode most of the way in silence, with Shad occasionally remarking on a point of interest or directing her gaze toward a clump of bright purple flowers or a deer grazing on the short yellow grass.

The wickiup looked the same as before. The yellow dog wagged its tail as Zuniga dismounted. Loralee was suddenly ill at ease as Zuniga lifted her from her horse. She had heard tales of Nachi from Mike Schofield. The old man had been a redoubtable warrior in his time. No doubt he had killed many a white woman and taken many a scalp. Her heart was pounding wildly as she followed Zuniga into the brush-covered lodge.

It was dark inside, with only the light of a small fire for illumination. There were no windows, no furniture of any kind save for two crude backrests made of woven willow branches and covered with hides. An old man sat cross-legged beside the fire, his chin resting on his chest, a blanket draped across his shoulders.

“Grandfather,” Shad said, his voice low and filled with respect. “I have brought someone to meet you.”

The old man glanced up, his sharp black eyes as bright and inquisitive as a child’s. “The school woman,” he said with a nod.

Zuniga grinned. “Yes, the school woman. Her name is Loralee Warfield. Loralee, this is Nachi.”

Loralee smiled uncertainly. Should she offer to shake the old man’s hand? Did Indians shake hands?

Nachi grinned as he patted the ground beside him. “Come, sit,” he invited.

“Thank you.” Loralee sat down beside the old man. The floor of the lodge was hard and cold.

Zuniga remained standing near the doorway. The old man smiled up at his grandson. “You have a good eye for a woman,” he observed candidly.

Loralee smiled, pleased by the compliment. She liked the old man, she decided. His eyes were honest and direct, his smile sincere.

She listened quietly as Shad told his grandfather about the school, and what Loralee was trying to teach the children, and then Nachi began to talk of the old days, of Geronimo. Geronimo had never truly been a chief, Nachi said, shaking his head, not like Cochise or Mangas. Nor was Geronimo a Chiricahua, as many thought, but a Bedonkohe Apache. He was the fourth child in a family of four boys and four girls. Geronimo firmly believed in destiny, and in the magic of the number four. He had four wives that were full-blooded Bedonkohe Apache, and four that were part Bedonkohe. Four of his children had been killed by Mexicans, and four were held in bondage by the United States. Yes, Nachi said, nodding sagely, the sacred number four was evident in Geronimo’s life.

Loralee nodded as the old man paused. She knew a great deal about Geronimo herself. He had surrendered for the last time on September 4 (four again, she thought), 1886. A few days later, he had been put on board a train and sent to Florida along with other Apache warriors, where they were put to work sawing logs. They were kept at hard labor for nearly two years. Sometime later, they were sent to Alabama, where they remained for several years until they were transferred to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. And that was where the old warrior lived now.

Loralee smiled faintly as Nachi broke into another war story. Geronimo was a fighter no longer. He had joined the Dutch Reformed Church and had been a Sunday school teacher, of all things! He had quickly learned the value of a white man’s dollar and he spent hours promoting himself, hawking photographs or bows and arrows at fairs and expositions. But, for all his popularity, he was still a prisoner of war.

Loralee’s attention turned to Nachi. He had stopped talking of war and was talking about
Usen
, the Apache God, and the various Apache tribes.
Usen
had created a special place on the earth for each tribe, Nachi remarked. The Indian was tied to the land, to his birthplace. Take him away from his homeland and he withered and died.

“It is true, even today,” Nachi said with conviction. “My people do not prosper when they are taken away from the land of their birth.”

Loralee nodded in agreement. It was true. The Apaches who had been taken to Fort Sill and other faraway places had not done well. Many had sickened and died, just as Nachi said. Today, their numbers were few.

Nachi spoke of General “Three Stars” Crook and how he had been respected by the Apache. He spoke of life in the high mountains, of the days when
Usen
had smiled on his red children.

After about forty minutes, Nachi sighed heavily. His head lolled forward, and Loralee assumed that he had fallen asleep. She glanced at Zuniga, who was squatting on his heels near the doorway.

“I miss my girl,” Nachi said. He lifted his head and stared hard at Loralee. “My lodge is empty without her.”

Loralee glanced at Zuniga again. Girl? What girl?

A flicker of sadness surfaced in Zuniga’s dark eyes and was quickly gone. “He means my mother,” Shad explained quietly.

“You would have liked my Nadina,” Nachi said, smiling at Loralee. “She was a good daugther, always thinking of her family. It was a sad day when she married Nakai. He was much older than she was. He was no good.” Nachi spat into the firepit. “Shad will tell you the same thing.”

“I wish I could have known your daughter,” Loralee said sincerely. “She must have been a very special woman.”

Nachi nodded as he bestowed another warm smile on Loralee. “She would have liked you. Always, she wanted a daughter, but I think it was better she had no children after Shad. Nakai was not a good father. He drank too much, and when he was drunk, he beat Shad and my Nadina. Our wickiup was a happier place when he was not in it.”

Zuniga stood up abruptly. “It is time for us to go, grandfather. I must take Miss Warfield back to the reservation.”

Nachi nodded, then grinned with pleasure as Loralee placed a kiss on his withered cheek. “Come again,” he said. “My lodge is yours.”

“Thank you,” Loralee replied. “I will.”

Zuniga laid a hand on his grandfather’s shoulder, then followed Loralee out of the lodge.

“I hope he did not bore you with his stories,” Zuniga muttered.

“No, it was wonderful. Why did we leave so suddenly?”

“He was in a talkative mood. Pretty soon he would have started telling you things that are better left unsaid.”

“Like what?”

Zuniga stared into the distance, a muscle working in his jaw. He was obviously upset, Loralee mused, but why?

“What is it?” she asked.

“Forget it, Loralee.”

She nodded as she followed him toward the corral, willing to let the subject drop. For the moment.

“He’s a dear man,” Loralee remarked. “Not at all what I expected.”

“What did you expect?” Zuniga asked dryly. “War paint, feathers, and fresh scalps hanging from the ceiling?”

“Of course not,” Loralee retorted with a toss of her head.

“Sure you did,” Zuniga insisted. “But just to set the record straight, my people rarely took scalps.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I thought you knew all about us.”

“Not everything,” Loralee admitted with a shy smile.

“Did you know scalping was introduced to the Indians by the whites?”

“Yes. And I also know the Mexicans used to pay a hundred-dollar bounty for Apache scalps.”

Zuniga nodded, his eyes dark and fierce. “The bounty was supposed to be for the scalps of fighting men only, but hair is hair, and there’s no way to tell if it belonged to a man or a woman, or a child, once you hack it off.”

It had been a shameful practice, Loralee thought, but it had happened. She glanced at Zuniga out of the corner of her eye. He was leaning against the corral, staring into the distance toward the setting sun. What deep, dark secret was he hiding, she wondered. What had he been afraid Nachi might say?

“My grandfather was a brave warrior in his day,” Shad mused. “I wish I had lived then.”

“Not me,” Loralee said with a shudder. “All that fighting and killing. Never knowing what was coming from one day to the next. Never feeling safe, even in your own home. No, I like it better now.”

“My people were better off a hundred years ago. Now, most of them are lost. They cannot change their ways of life to live in a white world.”

“They will, in time.”

Zuniga shook his head. “No. The Indians do not think like the whites. Our values are not the same. The white man has a need to own things, especially land. The Indians never thought of the land as theirs. You cannot own the earth. It belongs to the Great Spirit. There was enough room for everybody, but the white man could not share the land with the Indian. He had to fence it and fight for it. In the old days, an Apache warrior never owned anything but his horse and his weapons. The lodge and everything in it belonged to his woman.”

Zuniga laughed bitterly. “But the white man’s ways are catching on fast. Our women want to live in square houses and cook on stoves. They want cotton dresses and washtubs and tables and chairs. They are no longer content to cook and live in the old way.”

“Why should they be? Why not take advantage of things that make life easier? Why cook over an open fire when you can cook on a stove? Why sit on the floor when you can sit in a chair and be more comfortable? Why spend days cleaning and tanning a smelly old hide when you can buy a bolt of ready-made cloth and have a new dress in only a few hours?”

“Why?” Shad demanded angrily. “Why? We are Apaches, not white men. Why should we try to become like the whites? I will never be a white man! We are living on the white man’s charity, and look what it has done to us. My people have lost their pride, their identity, their reason to live. Even if we were to eat, dress, live, and talk like the whites, we would never be white. We are Indian! No matter how hard we try to be like your people, they will never accept us as equals. It would have been better for us if we had all been killed rather than surrender.”

Loralee was taken aback by his sudden burst of anger. She took a step back, keenly aware of the differences between them. “Do you really feel that way?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you come to school? If you don’t want to change, if you don’t want your people to change, why did you come?”

Zuniga closed the distance between them, his black eyes looking steadfastly into hers. “To be near you,” he answered quietly.

“Oh.”

Loralee’s cheeks flushed with pleasure and she felt suddenly shy. Would he make love to her again? He was still watching her intently, and she began to fidget with the collar of her dress. His nearness made her senses come alive and she was suddenly nervous without knowing why.

“I’m sorry you’re against changes for your people,” she said, not liking the heavy silence between them. “I think things are better now than in the old days. It might have been a lot of fun for the men, always out hunting and fighting and having a good time, but what about the women?” She was babbling in an effort to keep him away, not certain if she wanted him to know how much she needed him. “I’m glad I have a laundry tub to wash my clothes in so I don’t have to haul them down to the river and pound them on a rock. I like having a sewing machine and a stove and all the other things that make my life easier, and I know most of the Indian women would feel the same if given half a chance.”

“Maybe,” Zuniga allowed. “All I know is that something is missing from my life. I do not know what it is, but sometimes I feel like I do not belong anywhere.” He stared past her, the fire gone from his eyes as he gazed at the distant mountains.

Loralee felt a twinge of disappointment. She had expected him to take her in his arms. Why had she rambled on about washtubs? What had she been afraid of?

They were silent for several minutes. Loralee’s thoughts returned to their visit with Nachi. Zuniga was hiding something from her. What could it be?

“What was Nachi going to say that you didn’t want me to hear?” she blurted at last, her curiosity overcoming her manners.

“I said forget it.”

“It was about your father, wasn’t it?”