This Savage Heart (13 page)

Turning to his squaw, he barked, “I’m going out to get some supplies we’ll need for our journey. While I’m gone, give her a bath. And she needs something to wear. I wonder what we—”

Sujen spoke, her voice sharp. “She not wear my skin!”

Arlo wrinkled his nose. “Hell, no, don’t put your nasty buckskins on her. You smell like the animal you scraped them from, Sujen. I might as well mate with a buffalo. Wrap her in the blanket I used to carry her in.”

Suddenly his arm shot out. His hand wrapped around the Indian’s girl’s neck so tightly her eyes bulged. He squeezed hard, and hissed, “Heed me, bitch! You treat her well, see?”

He released her, flinging her into the dirt. Turning back to Julie, he was instantly tender. “Don’t worry, my love. I’m going to make you happy. You’ll see. A few more runs with the guns, you by my side, and we’ll find a peaceful place on some lovely mountain. There I will make you my queen. We’ll have babies, lots of babies…and you will truly be my precious Louise. I will cherish you for always and always.”

He leaned forward, lips parted, and a low, guttural sound escaped from someplace deep inside Sujen. Arlo hesitated. Later there would be time for his passion.

He straightened. “Do as I told you, Sujen,” he yelled. “I’ll be back by dark. Have her clean and warm, and have supper cooking.”

Sujen mumbled, “No way to hunt.”

“I’m not giving you a knife, you fool,” he said sarcastically. “Kill something with your bare hands. There’d better be food cooking when I get back.”

A loud shriek split the stillness as Sujen went into an uncontrollable rage. She began screaming in Navajo and threw herself at Julie, who was helpless beneath the pummeling fists. But only a few blows landed before Arlo wrapped his fingers in Sujen’s long hair and flung her across the hut.

“I warned you, bitch!” he cried hoarsely, jerking his belt from his trousers. “You need another lesson, and this one you’re gonna remember.”

Sujen curled into a ball, arms wrapping protectively around her swollen belly.

“Arlo, no!” Julie screamed as the belt whistled through the air and cut into Sujen’s flesh. “You’ll hurt the baby. Oh, God, don’t!”

The leather cracked again and again as Sujen writhed on the floor, not trying to cover her face, covering only her stomach. Blood began to ooze through the buckskin, and Julie sobbed. “Arlo,
damn you to hell
!”

He froze. The belt fell from his hand. He turned slowly to stare down at Julie. “Damn me to hell? Damn me to hell? Is that what you said, Louise? Lord! No!” He fell on his knees beside her pallet. “Oh, Louise, forgive me. To think I provoked you to curse me! I’m so sorry. Say you forgive me, please, please…”

Julie looked beyond him to where Sujen lay moaning and bleeding, tear-filled eyes watching in terror. She wriggled her fingers frantically above the ropes that held her wrists, desperately signaling to the girl to get out of sight. They were dealing with a man who was really insane. Great care would have to be taken. Oh, why didn’t the girl run?

Sujen understood. Slowly, painfully, she began inching her way through the dirt toward the door. Julie took a deep breath and prayed she could distract Arlo. “Yes, Arlo, I forgive you,” she whispered. “It’s all right. Everything is going to be all right.” What should she say next?

“I knew it!” he cried, tears of joy welling up in his eyes.

Julie watched him carefully, telling herself to smile.

“You do care about me, Louise, I mean, Julie. Oh, God, I
do
mean Louise, because you
are
my precious Louise, resurrected by the merciful God who knows I can’t live without you. We’ll have a good life…a happy life. You’ll see. Oh, Louise, darlin’, I’m going to be so good to you. Our firstborn will be a daughter—Betsy, resurrected, too—and we’ll be as happy as we were. Happier. Oh, Louise, I love you so…”

“Everything will be all right, Arlo,” she repeated, commanding herself to sound calm and warm.
Oh, please,
she silently prayed,
let him believe me.

She took a deep breath and then said, “Go now. Get me some clothes. It isn’t proper for me to be this way. And I’m cold, too.”

His eyes narrowed, and Julie panicked. Did he see through her?

He moved closer to her, and it was only by mustering all the self-control she possessed that Julie was able to accept his wet, trembling lips. “Oh, Lordy,” he gasped, drawing back, grinning, tossing his head wildly from side to side with glee. “It’s going to be so good, Louise, so good. Those other women, it was just animal hunger. With you, it was always a consecration of our pure love. And it’s going to be like that again. I know it.”

Arlo got to his feet and, without another word, took his coat from a nail near the door and walked purposefully out into the cold dawn.

Julie lay in the dank shelter, the smell of wet earth assaulting her. She continued to struggle against her bonds, but she knew it was futile. It was, she decided, the way worms must feel, surrounded by earth, nothing to do but wriggle and squirm.

The squeaking of the door made her lie very still, eyes squinting in the faint light. The door opened with agonizing slowness. The face of Sujen appeared, and Julie wavered between fear and hope. When the girl had stood there, motionless, for some time, Julie blurted, “I tried to make Arlo stop beating you. I helped you all I could. Won’t you help me, Sujen?”

Sujen painfully lowered herself, crouching beside the pallet. Her misery was evident. She winced with each move, continuing to wrap her arms protectively around her stomach.

Julie searched her face for a sign of what the girl might be thinking, but all Sujen did was stare, her face giving away nothing. “Sujen,” Julie began once more, raising her head from the pallet. “I begged Arlo not to beat you. I don’t want to see you hurt. I’m your friend. You don’t want me to be hurt, do you? Untie me, and I’ll get out of here, and then you can have Arlo. I don’t want to stay with him. You see, I have someone else. So Arlo can be yours.”

“No!”

Julie blinked. With a rasping gasp, Sujen leaned closer, eyes wide. “Arlo take me into hut, give me food. Now Arlo beat me. Sujen go.”

“Where, Sujen? How can you survive?” Julie whispered.

Sujen’s chin lifted defiantly, and her black eyes flashed. “Sujen not let baby die.”

Good, Julie told herself. The girl wasn’t beaten. She had pride, even after all she’d been through. “Then help me escape, too, Sujen,” Julie implored. “Help me get back to my people, please.” Julie was determined that this proud, strong girl would help her—somehow. “They’re good people. I think they’ll take you in, give you a place to live, and food.”

The Indian girl’s lips trembled slightly as she said, “If Sujen help you, Arlo kill me. Must go.”

She started to get up, but Julie’s outraged cry stopped her. “You’re going to just leave me here, after I begged him not to beat you? If I hadn’t been tied, I
would
have stopped him. I was willing to do that for you, even though you’d already tried to hurt me. Yet you’re going to leave without helping me?” Her words hung in the air.

Sujen’s face remained impassive, but after a moment she said, “No.”

Julie was stunned, then, as Sujen produced a knife from inside her knee-high moccasins.

“Must hurry,” Sujen muttered, and she began cutting away at Julie’s ropes.

“Have you had that knife all the time?” Julie ventured, and for the first time, Sujen smiled. She nodded.

When Julie was free, she tightened the blanket around her and hurried to the door. Staring outside, she saw that the hut was on the side of a rocky slope, and the incline was almost straight down. One stumble and they would roll all the way to the bottom.

“Follow,” Sujen commanded, starting to walk up the slope.

Julie pointed downward. “We have to get to town, Sujen,
that
way.”

Sujen smiled. “The way Arlo went. You wish to go that way?”

Julie knew what she meant but wondered, “How are we going to find the others if we have to go in the opposite direction?”

“We waste time talking,” Sujen said urgently, climbing upward. It was a rough climb, and it was cold in the bleak wilderness. Despite the woolen blanket, Julie was shivering. The wind assaulted without letup. Moving was hard, because she had to keep one hand on the blanket.

After several minutes of climbing upward, Sujen disappeared behind a huge rock, then reappeared. “Now we go down.”

Below, in the mist, they could see El Paso and, beyond, the thin ribbon of the Rio Grande river. Watching it, Julie stumbled, twisted her ankle, and fell to her knees. Sujen turned to stare. “No, I’m all right,” Julie told her, standing and testing the ankle. It was not hurt very badly, and nothing, not even a broken leg, would keep her there! She forced herself on.

Sujen grabbed a fallen branch and, using her knife to hack at the twigs, created a smooth walking stick. Julie accepted it gratefully, and the Indian girl led them on.

As they drew closer to the bottom, the brush became thicker and denser. Progress was more difficult as they maneuvered their way through the brambles and foliage, but at least there was less chance of Arlo spotting them.

Several hours after they’d escaped the hut, they slid down one last, steep bank and crouched behind thick clumps of bushes. They were right on the edge of the town! Warily, they looked around. Julie was exhausted and shaking. But seeing other people—men unloading wagons, women bundled against the harsh chill—was such a comfort. On the other hand, Arlo could be anywhere and, if he saw them, would doubtless shoot. Did they dare move into the open and chance it? They stayed where they were for a little while, considering.

Feeling Sujen’s fingertips on her shoulder, Julie turned to look into the dark eyes. “Why white girl help Sujen, when Sujen wanted to kill you?”

Did Sujen think she had been used again, Julie wondered, as Arlo and so many others had used her?

“Sujen, I want to be your friend,” she said. “You’ve proved you’re my friend by helping me escape. We won’t think about how you felt before. What you felt was normal, but that’s all over now. We’re friends.”

“Friends,” Sujen repeated.

Julie looked over the brush again, and this time the sight made her scream. “Derek! Oh, God, Derek!” She thrashed through the last of the brambles, stumbling down an incline, dropping the walking stick and limping toward him as fast as she could.

Derek had been standing outside the sheriff’s office. At the blessed sound of her voice, he turned and ran to meet her, grabbing her against his chest and squeezing tightly. She was overcome by the joy of his strength, the sensation of complete protection flowing through her.

“Derek, Derek, hold me, hold me,” she sobbed, tears streaming, her whole body shuddering. “Never, never let me go again.”

Derek did not begin asking frantic questions. She needed to be held, and then to be cared for. There would be time, later, to find out what had happened. Just then, he had to get Julie away from the quickly gathering crowd—townspeople, soldiers summoned from Fort Bliss to form a search party, the sheriff. Lifting her in his arms, he started toward the hotel.

Calming a little in his embrace, Julie suddenly cried, “Sujen! Derek, she’s frightened, so she won’t come out.”

Derek stopped, staring down at her.

“She helped me escape,” Julie explained. “It was Arlo Vance who carried me off, and if it hadn’t been for Sujen, I’d still be tied up in that filthy hut, waiting for him to come back.”

Derek set her on her feet. “Where is she?” he demanded, and she pointed to where Sujen was peering out from behind the bushes. Swiftly, he walked toward the girl.

“Don’t frighten her,” she called to him.

Sujen sank out of sight, and Derek demanded that she come out. Slowly, looking beyond him to Julie, she stood up. Then, cautiously, Julie limped to Derek’s side and said, “I promised her she could go to Arizona with us, that we’d take care of her. I couldn’t have escaped without her.”

He whirled on her. His eyes were tormented. “Did Arlo touch you, Julie? Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head. “He’s crazy, Derek. He thinks I’m his dead wife, Louise, or something like her. He didn’t touch me in the way you mean. We can’t let Sujen go back to him. He’ll kill her.”

“I’m going to kill Arlo, so nobody need worry about that bastard anymore,” Derek said in that deadly voice she knew so well.

From a distance down the street, in the shadows of a saloon porch, Arlo Vance watched, uncontrollable fury whipping through him. He would have his revenge, he promised himself silently. And another name was added to his list—Sujen’s. Yes, he thought, smiling to himself. They would all pay, and pay with everything they had. All of them.

Chapter Twelve

The wagon train left El Paso and moved through southwestern New Mexico toward the Arizona territory. It was late March, 1865, and no one could say which he’d welcome more, the end of the war back home, or the end of the winter that still raged around them.

Winds came, relentlessly whipping dirt and sand up into the sky where it was turned into rain, then thrust back at them in muddy torrents. Some were sure the world was ending when mud fell from the sky.