Savage Spirit (3 page)

Riding along the dusty California Road, Alicia kept glancing toward the sky. Soon it would be dark, and she hadn't seen hide nor hair of the stagecoach. The only alternatives were for her to either turn back or seek shelter for the night. It was obvious that she was not going to catch up with the stagecoach tonight.

She glanced guardedly from side to side. Every time she rode alone at night, she chanced being accosted by renegades or outlaws. Tonight she had to risk it. It was absolutely imperative that Charlie receive her letter.

But what if Charlie had already left Saint Louis for the Arizona Territory? she worried to herself. She realized that he might never find her.

"Big brother, why can't you just leave well enough alone?" she whispered to herself. "You have your life. I have mine."

The road wound into a canyon. She stiffened.   The crooks and crannies of the canyon could conceal thieves.

Alicia sank her heels into the flanks of her horse and rode into the canyon, the horse's hooves echoing back at her like claps of thunder. She frowned up at the small sliver of sky that was revealed overhead. Only a faint trace of daylight remained. She must ride free of the canyon before total blackness flooded the area. She would be in a better position to defend herself against a sudden ambush.

Her heart pounding, she rode onward.

When she finally rode out into open country again, she sighed heavily and lifted her eyes to the sky. "Thank you, Lord," she whispered. "I guess my speaking a few curse words now and then hasn't made you turn your eyes away from me after all."

But she knew that she wasn't safe just yet. She slapped her reins and rode onward.

Night suddenly enfolded her like a dark shroud. Clouds slid over the moon, then sailed away again. Every so often, she heard the haunting sound of a wolf baying at the moon. An owl screeched in the trees at her right side.

Then the thing that Alicia feared most happened. She heard a single
pn-n-ng,
then a crash of rifle fire from behind her, which rocked her in her saddle.

She took a quick glance over her shoulder and drew in a ragged, frightened breath when she discovered horsemen rapidly coming up behind her. Her heart sank when she made out many renegade Indians and white outlaws. She knew that she didn't have a chance in hell of defending herself.   She bent lower over her saddle and sent her horse into a neck-breaking gallop, as though hellfire was raging around her. She rode through a hail of bullets down a steep incline.

Suddenly she felt the sting of a bullet as it entered her left thigh. The pain was intense, as if a burning brand were being pressed into her flesh.

Instinct led her to grab her leg. She cringed when she discovered blood seeping through her buckskin trousers, spreading like ink on a blotter across the soft material.

Then an Indian rode up beside her and with one yank took the mail sack from her horse.

As she grabbed for the sack, cursing the Indian, she lost her balance.

Screaming, she tumbled from her horse. Her head hit the dirt-packed road with a sudden impact. For a moment she was surrounded by a spinning blackness, then she lay quietly unconscious.

A short distance away, Cloud Eagle's ears picked up the sound of gunfire. He wheeled his horse to a quick stop and turned his ear into the wind, listening. When he heard nothing more, he started to ride onward, then stopped again.

Red Crow sidled his horse up beside Cloud Eagle's. "I heard it also," he said, always able to read his friend's thoughts. "Should we go and see the cause of the gunfire?"

Knowing the many innocent people who were being accosted almost nightly along the busy California Road, and knowing that they were white people, intruders on Cloud Eagle's land,   he did not respond to Red Crow right away. A part of him wished that no more white people would come to the Arizona Territory. He felt that those who were stopped by renegades or outlaws deserved what they got for interfering in the lives of the Apache.

Yet he had signed a pact of peace with the white people's government. He had even found many white people with whom he had made a close alliance. Those who were fired upon tonight might be the same sort of person as Good Heart, or others whom Cloud Eagle had grown to admire in the white community.

"The firing is over," Cloud Eagle finally said. "But that does not mean that the person or persons fired upon are not still alive, and in mortal danger." He paused. ''Yes, we will go and see what we can do."

He turned to his warriors and told them to stay behind, except for Red Crow.

Then he and Red Crow rode hard across the shadowed land, the coyotes bounding along behind them.

The moon spilled a path along the road, lighting up the countryside for a far distance ahead of them. Cloud Eagle and Red Crow exchanged quick glances when a horse came thundering toward them, the reins blowing in the wind, the saddle empty.

Then their attention was drawn elsewhere.

"Up ahead!" Cloud Eagle shouted at Red Crow. "Many riders! They are riding away from us."

"What they left behind is what I fear," Red Crow said. He squinted his eyes in an effort to focus on an object lying in the road ahead.

"I see it also," Cloud Eagle said, before Red   Crow got the words from his mouth. "More than likely the man is dead."

"Shall we pursue those who are responsible for the ambush?" Red Crow shouted back.

"Did you see their number?" Cloud Eagle said, frowning.

Red Crow nodded.

"Then you know that we are outnumbered and should not risk our lives foolishly," Cloud Eagle said.

"
In-gew.
All right," Red Crow said, again nodding.

They rode in a harder gallop until they came to the figure lying lifelessly in the road.

Red Crow stayed in his saddle with his rifle drawn, while Cloud Eagle quickly dismounted and knelt down beside the one who had been attacked.

The coyote pets held back, then inched closer. Cloud Eagle's eyes widened in disbelief when he discovered that this person was most certainly not a man. The fall had knocked the hat from her head, and her brilliant red hair spilled across her shoulders.

"This is not a man," he said up to Red Crow. He was puzzled by her attire. "See the hair? White men do not wear hair as long as the Apache. Only their women wear hair this long."

"But she is dressed as a boy," Red Crow, puzzled, responded. "How can that be? Why would she wear clothes that hide the curves of a woman beneath them?"

"She is white. Who can say why white women do anything?" Cloud Eagle said, shrugging. "Are they not a mystery to the Apache?"   "Yes, that is so," Red Crow said, nodding. "Is she dead or alive?"

"She breathes," Cloud Eagle responded, leaning closer to take a better look at the fallen one.

He looked in undisguised wonderment at her face. He had already seen this face today. It was the woman in the painting that belonged to the white man!

Stunned by this discovery, his gaze swept over her. He allowed himself a more leisurely look at her. Her lips were full and perfectly shaped. Her lashes were thick, like dark crescents across her pale cheeks.

His fingers touched her hair and felt its softness, and he was again taken by the color as he had been when he had seen her likeness in the painting. It was the color of tongues of flame!

He stared at the soiled buckskin breeches and shirt, then at the curves that their tightness defined.

She was so very
much
a woman, with well-rounded breasts, a tiny waist, and slim hips.

His musings at having found the woman of the painting were interrupted when he discovered the wound on the thigh of her left leg. Blood was seeping from it and spreading through the material of her breeches, pooling on the ground like a miniature sun.

He knew that he did not want this woman to die from loss of blood. Acting quickly, he swept his knife from its sheath at his right side. The blade gleamed in the moonlight like a blade of ice. With precise movements, he cut the leg of the woman's breeches open.

He sighed with relief. She had only a flesh wound. He would not have to scar her body   by digging into her lovely flesh to get the bullet out.

Yet even though this was only a flesh wound, it was bad enough for her to be losing too much blood.

Quickly he removed his headband and tied a tourniquet around her leg. Soon the flow of the blood stopped.

"And how is the fallen one?" Red Crow asked, having silently watched as Cloud Eagle ministered to the woman.

"She will live," Cloud Eagle said, flashing a wide smile over his shoulder at Red Crow. "And do you know who this woman is? Red Crow, it is the woman in the painting today, the painting that the white man would not part with."

"How can that be?" Red Crow said, dismounting to take a look at Alicia. He was taken aback by the resemblance, and by her loveliness. If he was not happy with his two wives, he could very easily take a liking to this woman. Even if she did wear the clothes of a man.

"You see, my friend?" Cloud Eagle crowed. "It
is
the woman."

"And what will you do with her now that you have seen to her wound?" Red Crow asked, raising an eyebrow at Cloud Eagle.

"I know not where she belongs, so she will go with you and me," Cloud Eagle said, his heart pounding at the thought of having this woman in his possession, even for a short while. It would give him time to search his soul as to why he was so intrigued with her.

He flinched and his spine stiffened when the woman uttered a soft moan and he saw that her eyelashes were fluttering. He recalled the color   of her eyes in the painting. They had been so blue, it was as though they had captured the sky in them.

Alicia slowly opened her eyes. She became quickly aware of the pounding of her head and the pain in her left leg.

She groaned as she tried to move. Then, when she felt a presence there, with her, her eyes flew wide open.

A scream froze in her throat when she saw an Indian leaning over her, staring at her. Believing this was one of the renegades who had ambushed her, she was gripped by fear.

Her gaze was drawn to the two coyotes who stood near the Indian. They bared their sharp fangs at her and growled.

Instinct caused her to reach for the pistol holstered at her waist.

Cloud Eagle moved just as quickly, grabbing the pistol from her and thrusting the firearm into the waist of his breechclout.

"You damn lowdown, thieving Injun," Alicia hissed out as she glared up at Cloud Eagle.

Cloud Eagle's midnight-dark eyes filled with an angry fire. "You should be careful whom you call ugly, wrongful names," he said, his voice tight.

Alicia cowered beneath his steady stare, awaiting his next move. It suddenly dawned on her that this man had it in his power to decide whether she was going to live or die.  

Alicia's eyes shifted to the two coyotes. She squirmed uneasily as they paced before her, their steel-gray eyes studying her. "Can't you do something about those damn animals?" she said, giving Cloud Eagle a quick, angry glance, though she was no longer as afraid of the animals as before. It was obvious they were the Indian's pets.

Cloud Eagle bent over and patted Snow and Gray. He then stood tall and square-shouldered, revealing his corded muscles. "Go. Go to Red Crow," he said, pointing to him.

After the coyotes bounded away from him, Cloud Eagle turned his eyes to Red Crow. "My friend, go and find this woman's horse," he said, his raven-black hair rippling in the breeze. "Take my pets with you. The woman finds them troublesome."

Red Crow questioned Cloud Eagle for a   moment with his dark eyes. His hesitation was not so much because of his friend's command. It was because of Cloud Eagle's attentiveness to the white woman.

Red Crow saw danger in his best friend's interest in the female. As he saw it, there was no place in either of their lives for a white woman. If he had his way, he would leave her stranded and let the animals of the night have their way with her.

But it was evident that Cloud Eagle had other plans for her, and it was up to Red Crow to accept his friend's decisions. Cloud Eagle was not only his best friend, but his chief. Never had Red Crow openly questioned anything that Cloud Eagle commanded.

Nor would he reveal to Cloud Eagle that he was questioning his reasons for his actions tonight.

Red Crow nodded to Cloud Eagle. He whistled to Snow and Gray, then rode off at a brisk gallop, the coyotes trailing behind him.

Cloud Eagle turned his attention back to Alicia.

Scarcely breathing, she stared up at him.

"And so you have sent your coyotes away," she said. "What does that prove? That you are my friend?" She laughed sarcastically. "I think not. I can see right through this ploy meant to make me trust you."

She paused and grabbed at her throbbing leg when a pain shot through it, then stared once again defiantly up at Cloud Eagle. "I never trust thieving Injuns," she hissed out. She winced again as the pain worsened. "Especially one who has shot me."

Her reference to Cloud Eagle as a "thieving Injun" and her assumption that he had shot her   sent ripples of anger through Cloud Eagle. But he held his feelings deeply within him, practicing the restraint that he had learned as a child. He would find ways to change the woman's mind.

It puzzled him that she did not recognize him as a friendly Apache. Yet perhaps she saw no difference between one tribe of Indians and another.

He had to correct this misconception immediately. Her friendship was of the utmost importance to him. He was mystified by her and her strange ways. Her behavior was different from that of any woman he had ever known.

"You have nothing to fear," he said. He held his hands out and spread his fingers. "The Apache are like the fingersseparate. We live in small bands. If one band is destroyed by enemies, all others may live."

He placed a hand over his heart. "My name is Cloud Eagle," he said, pride showing in the depths of his midnight-dark eyes. "I am of the El Pinal Coyotero Apache. I have made peace with people of your skin coloring. My people are well known for their peaceful ways. You are of this region? You should know of the Coyotero Apache's peaceful ways and realize that I mean you no harm. I have come to your rescue. I wish to help you with your wound. You should allow it."