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“Diggings? You mean to say they’re miners?” Miranda asked, trying to imagine what might lie beneath such barren, lime-encrusted earth.
“Miners? Them Injuns?” The young driver snorted contemptuously. “Shucks, no. They dig themselves holes in the ground to keep out of the weather—lessn’ they can find some old hides or sheets of tin to put up for a shack. Why should the lazy buggers mine or farm or even hunt when they can live on handouts from the good old United States Government?”
“You mean, they have no houses? No means of employment?” Miranda asked, horrified.
“Hell—” the young man swore, then broke off and began again. “’Scuse me, miss, but they’s Navajos. An’ Navajos got their own ways of doin’ things. General Carleton, afore he got his butt—’scuse me again, miss—afore he was dismissed from runnin’ this place, he got the idea of havin’ ’em build big adobe apartment houses like the Pueblos got. Right smart idea, if you ask me. But the Navajos, they wouldn’t have none of it. Wanted to live apart in their own kind of houses, little round huts they call hogans. Finally Carleton just threw up his hands and told ’em to go ahead! But did they build any hogans? Did they build anything a’tall? Look around you!”
The corporal worked his tobacco out of his cheek and spat over the edge of the wagon. “Only thing Navajos is any good at is forgin’ fake ration tokens so they can steal more supplies! Now that Carleton’s gone there’s been talk of movin’ ’em out, most likely to the Injun Territories in Oklahoma. Good riddance, I’d say. But nobody’s holdin’ their breath for that, I tell you, ’specially now that the Injun Bureau’s took ’em over from the army. Danged government bureaucrats won’t do much more’n hand out more flour and blankets.”
“But what a wretched way for people to live!” Miranda exclaimed in genuine horror. “No work, no homes, no dignity! Surely someone could help them, teach them—”
“Beggin’ your pardon, miss, but the Navajos brought their troubles on theirselves. They was raidin’ and murderin’ over half of Arizona afore Kit Carson and his boys brought ’em to heel an’ marched the lot of ’em here to Bosque Redondo.”
“Bosque Redondo?” Miranda frowned. “That means round grove in Spanish, doesn’t it? I certainly don’t see any grove in these parts!”
The corporal snorted with laughter. “Weren’t no more than a few trees to begin with, and the Navajos cut those down for firewood the first winter. Now there’s no shade in summer and nothin’ to burn when it gets cold. Never think past tomorrow, them murderin’ redskin fools. If you ask me, Carson shoulda killed ’em all while he had the chance!”
Miranda pulled her cloak tighter about her shoulders, willing herself to ignore the young driver’s unsettling talk. It would not do for her to get caught up in this Navajo business, she lectured herself. She had come to New Mexico to spend the holidays with her father, the last time they would be together before her June wedding, perhaps the last time ever. Nothing could be allowed to spoil their time together.
“There. Told you we’d be seein’ ’em soon.” The corporal’s nasal twang cut into her thoughts. Miranda leaned forward on the wagon seat. She shaded her eyes and scanned the horizon, expecting mounted savages to come whooping over the next rise. Only when the corporal nudged her arm and pointed sharply to the left did she realize her first Navajo was little more than a stone’s throw away.
Miranda turned, looked—and felt her heart contract with pity.
The old Navajo woman stood in the dust at the roadside, her withered body outlined against the blazing vermilion sunset. The desert wind whipped her faded rags against her bones, and the imploring hands that stretched upward like the thin branches of a winter tree shook with age and cold.
“Stop!” Miranda seized the corporal’s arm. The outriders swiveled their heads at the sound of her voice. They slowed their mounts, but did not halt.
“Didn’t you hear me?” Miranda tightened her grip, demanding the corporal’s attention. “I said stop the wagon! We’ve got to do something!”
His washed-out eyes stared at her blankly. “Do somethin’? For her, you mean? Lawse sake, miss, what for? That ain’t nothin’ but a dirty old squaw.” He spat another stream of tobacco over the side of the still-moving wagon. “Anyhow, we got to get you to the fort afore nightfall, or your pa will be fixin’ to throw us all in the stockade!”
He lifted the reins to slap them down on the backs of the plodding mules, but Miranda, anticipating the move, lunged forward, snatched the leather lines from his grip and jerked the team to an abrupt halt.
“What the hell—” the corporal sputtered.
“She’s not just a dirty old squaw. She’s a human being, and she needs help!” Miranda declared. “As for you and your fellow soldiers, if you don’t want to get involved, the least you can do is stand back and allow me to do what I can!”
The outriders had stopped now, and turned their mounts. They watched with varying degrees of amusement as Miranda lifted the skirt of her gray serge traveling suit and clambered down, unassisted, from the buckboard. None of them, it appeared, had the manners to help her or the compassion to aid a fellow being in need.
Over the past four years Miranda had read newspaper articles about the Navajos and how they’d been rounded up and force-marched from their homeland to the bleakness of Fort Sumner. But only now, at her first sight of a real Navajo, did the words she’d read take on life and meaning. In one shriveled face and a pair of twisted, begging hands, she saw the misery of an entire people. It tore at her heart and fueled her sense of outrage to a fever pitch.
The wispy-haired crone was clad in the remnant of a coarse woolen shift, handwoven in a striped pattern that might once have been colorful but was now faded and dirty, showing patches of warp where the weave had worn away. She shrank into herself as Miranda approached, her bare arms folding inward like the legs of a frozen insect. The small mewling noises she made scarcely sounded human.
“It’s all right, I won’t hurt you,” Miranda murmured, edging closer. She could see terror in the raisin-black eyes, and something else—something so disturbing that her heart crept into her throat.
“Give me those leftover biscuits from lunch,” she said softly, glancing up at the corporal in the wagon. When he hesitated, her eyes narrowed so sharply that he lunged to do her bidding. As the daughter of his commanding officer, Miss Miranda Howell was not without power.
Seconds later the biscuits were in Miranda’s hands. “Here, take them.” She held the food at arm’s length, standing quietly as the old woman crept toward her like a frightened, starving animal. “It’s all right,” Miranda urged gently. “No one’s going to hurt you.”
“I’d back off if I was you, miss.” One of the outriders spoke into the windy silence. “I know that old squaw. Crazy Sally, they call her. Hear tell she lit into a soldier one time and bit him on the arm. Tore him open so bad he needed stitches from the medic. No tellin’ what she might do to you.”
Miranda swallowed a knot of uneasiness as she chose to ignore the man’s warning. “It’s all right, Sally,” she coaxed, even more gently than before. “We don’t mean you any harm. Just take the food.”
Madness flashed in the ancient eyes as the old woman sidled closer. With a sudden move she snatched the biscuits away with her little clawed hands and scampered to the shelter of a dark sandstone outcrop. There she squatted on her haunches, glaring at Miranda while she stuffed the biscuits frantically into her near-toothless mouth. Saliva, mixed with soggy white crumbs, trickled down her chin. Miranda found herself wondering how Crazy Sally could have bitten anyone, let alone inflicted serious damage.
“All right, miss, you done it,” the wagon driver said. “You proved whatever you wanted to prove. Now let me give you a hand up and we’ll be headin’ on to the fort. You don’t want to be out here after dark.”
Miranda glanced up at him, still hesitant. The early spring wind, tasting of snow, plucked tendrils of her light brown hair and whipped at the folds of her woolen cloak as she turned back toward the old woman. Crazy Sally was still crouched against the rocks, her small black eyes narrowed to slits against the blowing dust.
“For the love of Pete, what is it now?” the wagon driver demanded.
Miranda’s eyes took in the old woman’s threadbare dress and exposed limbs. “We can’t just go off and leave her. There’s a storm blowing in. She’ll freeze before morning. Help me get her into the wagon. We’ve got to take her back to the fort.”
None of the soldiers moved.
Miranda’s gazed darted from one impassive face to the next. Some of the men averted their eyes, avoiding her furious gaze. Most of them did not bother. Had she pushed them too far this time?
“Beggin’ your pardon, miss.” The first outrider spoke up at last. “Ain’t none of us goin’ to lay a hand on that old squaw, let alone put her in the wagon.”
“If she ain’t got the sense to take shelter, let ’er freeze,” the corporal chimed in. “Good riddance to one more Navajo, that’s what I’d say. It’s what we’d all say.”
Miranda glared up at him in helpless rage. Phillip, her fiancé, had once accused her of being a flaming do-gooder who never knew when to leave well enough alone. He was undoubtedly right. Even so, she could not just walk away and leave a fellow human being to die.
“Very well.” She squared her shoulders and folded her arms across her chest. “If Sally stays here, then so do I. You can tell my father—”
“The major would hang us if we was to go off and leave you here,” the outrider interrupted. “We got orders to bring you safely back to Fort Sumner. With all due respect, miss, if we have to hogtie you and toss you in the wagon bed, that’s exactly what we’ll do.”
Miranda’s heart sank as she realized she had backed herself into an impossible corner. If she refused to get in the wagon, it would be an easy matter for nine men to move her by force. And, given the circumstances, her father would likely excuse their actions.
Her shoulders sagged in acquiescence. But there was one small victory yet to win, one last thing she could still do for poor old Sally, and this time, she vowed, no one was going to stop her.
Lifting her chin in defiance, she began unbuttoning the front of her long, hooded cloak. A birthday gift from Phillip’s family, the cloak had been woven in France from the finest blue merino wool and had likely cost a small fortune. Even now, the lush fabric caressed her fingers as she worked the buttons through their satin-bound holes. The wind was numbing in its chill. But she would be at the fort within the hour, Miranda reminded herself. And she could always buy another cloak, just as warm if not as elegant.
She waited for the soldiers to protest, but none of them spoke as she released the last button and slid the cloak off one shoulder. By now they probably thought she was as crazy as old Sally. Well, let them think whatever they wished. She would do the right thing, the moral thing, and the whole contemptuous lot of them could go to blazes.
The icy wind struck, penetrating to Miranda’s bones as the cloak slipped free of her body. She gasped with the sudden shock of it, then forcefully brought her reaction under control. This was no time to show weakness, she lectured herself. If old Sally could endure the cold, so could she.
Clenching her jaw against the urge to shiver, she turned back to the old woman, opened the cloak and wrapped it around the ravaged body. The garment was far too large for the tiny Navajo crone. Its elegant folds pooled around her where she squatted on her bony haunches, the lining already gathering dust. In no time at all the beautiful cloak would be filthy. But at least Sally would be warm. Heaven willing, she would survive the cold night with its blowing wind and snow, and many more nights to come.
“And just what do you think you’re doing?”
The voice was not loud, but its deep resonance, coming from behind and above her, made Miranda gasp. She turned so sharply that she lost her balance and stumbled to one side, wrenching her ankle. She caught herself against a jutting boulder, just managing to avoid an all-out sprawl.
“I asked you what you thought you were doing.” The voice was laced with a fury so cold that it made the raw wind seem as gentle as a southern breeze. Still clinging to the rock, Miranda looked up to see a tall, mounted figure, starkly outlined against a sky that had deepened to the color of flowing blood.
The man was not a soldier—that much was clear at once. He was hatless and swathed in a long, fringed poncho that swirled around him in the stinging wind. Only when his horse snorted and turned, the new angle flooding his features with crimson light, did Miranda see the high, jutting cheekbones, the obsidian eyes, the long raven hair, bound with string into a knot at the back of his head. Only then did she realize he was Navajo.
And for all his angry tone, he had just spoken to her in very passable English.
“This woman was hungry and freezing!” She shouted above the wind in response to his question. “I did what any decent soul would do. I gave her something to eat and something to keep her warm.”
“And tomorrow she’ll be out here begging again!” he snapped. “She and a half dozen others who’ve seen what you gave her. Begging is not the way of my people! We may be poor, but we take care of our own!”
“So I see!” Miranda pushed herself fully erect, seething with indignation. “Is this how you take care of your helpless old people? By sending them out in the winter to starve or freeze?”
“My mother’s sister is not well. She wandered away from camp and I came looking for her.” He seemed somewhat taken aback by Miranda’s outburst, but only for an instant. Then his chiseled face darkened as he swung off his horse, seized the cloak and jerked it none too gently from around the old woman’s frail body.
“No!” Now it was Miranda’s turn to be indignant. “I gave her that cloak to save her life! You’ve no right to take it from her!”
The man’s thin upper lip curled in a grimace of contempt, showing a flash of white, even teeth. “You,” he snarled, dangling the garment from his long, brown fingers. “Teachers, missionaries, dogooders of every damned kind! You’re as bad as the army—no, worse! They only kill our bodies! You kill our spirits, our traditions, our pride!” The wind caught the cloak, swirling it high just before he flung it into the dust at Miranda’s feet.
“Pride?” She made no move to bend and pick it up, even though the cold was cutting like a knife through the thin serge of her suit jacket. “Will pride keep an old woman from freezing? Will pride keep a young child with an empty belly from crying in the night?”
For the space of a long, tense breath he glared at her. Then, without a word, he reached up and worked the opening of his own thick woolen poncho over his head. Bending down from his imposing six-foot height, he wrapped the poncho around the old woman’s shivering body. When he spoke to her in Navajo his voice was low, almost melodious. Miranda found herself straining her ears to catch the odd, birdlike tones of a language she was hearing for the first time. But he spoke only a few phrases. Then he lifted his head and glared at her with hate-filled eyes.
“We take care of our own,” he said in an icy voice, “and we would rather steal than beg. We don’t need your kind here. Get in that wagon and go back to where you came from, bilagáana woman! If you want to help us, write to your president in Washington and tell him to let the Diné go home to their own land!”
Miranda’s attention had been fixed on the old woman and the tall Navajo. She did not realize, until the first one spoke, that two of the outriders had dismounted and come up behind her.
“I’d watch my mouth if I was you, Ahkeah,” one of the men drawled. “This here ain’t no Bible-thumpin’ missionary lady. This is the major’s own daughter, come to pay her pa a visit.”
The revelation seemed to make no difference to the man the soldier had called Ahkeah. He stood his ground, the wind whipping his faded cotton tunic against his lean, hard body. Only by chance did Miranda notice that his hand had moved to rest protectively on old Sally’s humped shoulders.
“I say this uppity Injun ought to apologize to Miz Howell here and now.” The second outrider gripped his rifle, his swaggering stance challenging the unarmed Navajo to defy him. “Go ahead, Ahkeah, we’re all waitin’.”
Tension hung dark and leaden on the wintry air. In the wagon, the corporal slipped his rifle bolt into fully cocked position. The faint click splintered the icy silence, but no one else moved. Even the mules seemed to be watching, waiting, their white breath steaming from their distended nostrils.
Miranda had forgotten the cold wind that knifed through her clothing. She had almost forgotten to breathe. Her eyes were on Ahkeah. He had stepped in front of the old woman, shielding her with his body as he faced the soldiers. Under different circumstances his size and strength would have been more than a match for any two of them. But here and now the odds were nine against one, and all the cavalrymen were armed.
The Navajo’s flinty eyes narrowed like a puma’s as he measured his enemies. The man was proud, but no fool, Miranda surmised. He would choose his battles, and this was neither the time nor the place to take a stand. His throat rippled lightly as he swallowed, then spoke.
“My apologies, Miss Howell.” His voice dripped contempt. “In the future, kindly save your charity for those who appreciate it. Please enjoy your visit to this fair country.”
Without another word he turned a defiant back on the soldiers, and, shepherding the old woman before him, strode toward his emaciated horse.
“Not so fast!” the first outrider snapped. “If that was an apology, I’m the king of France, you smart-mouthed redskin bastard. Come on back here and say it like you mean it, or somebody’s gonna be pickin’ lead out of your backside!”
Ahkeah turned only when the second man cocked his rifle. His eyes glittered like black ice in the twilight. “I’m unarmed and here under treaty,” he said, his cold, flat voice implying that any soldier’s firing on a defenseless Navajo would raise a cry that would be heard all the way to Washington.
“Piss on the treaty,” the soldier growled. “I’ve shot plenty of your kind, Ahkeah. Too many for a piece of paper to make a dime’s worth of difference. Now, do you want to apologize to the lady again or do I pull this trigger and blow your stubborn head off?”
“This is ridiculous!” Miranda flung herself between the two antagonists. “No one is going to shoot anybody, Private. Now get back on your horse and let this man take his poor old aunt home.”
Distracted by her outburst, Ahkeah did not see what was coming next—nor did Miranda, until she heard the sickening thunk of a rifle butt against flesh and bone. The tall Navajo crumpled to the earth, felled by a third soldier, who had crept up behind him. He lay sprawled on his face, the blood seeping from his shattered temple onto the frozen ground.
Chapter Two
The old woman was first to reach the fallen Navajo. She crouched over him, pawing at his face with her hands and making the frightened little mewling noises. As Miranda approached, she scuttled backward and, still wearing the poncho he’d flung around her shoulders, vanished into the swirling darkness.
“Son of a bitch!” the private swore, jerking his rifle bolt back into safety position. “What’d you go and clobber him for, McCoy? That Ahkeah’s been nothin’ but trouble since the day he come in! Always stirrin’ things up! I coulda shot the bastard and been rid of him once and for all!”
“I did it to save your fool hide,” the other man retorted. “Pull the trigger on a Navajo, with so many government bigwigs snoopin’ ’round here, and your ass would be in a sling for the next twenty years! You’ll thank me for it once you simmer down.”
“Maybe.” The private wiped his runny nose with the back of his hand. “Come on, let’s get outa here. With luck, the bastard won’t even remember what hit him when he wakes up.” He spun on his heel and strode back toward his horse.
“Wait!” Miranda had dropped to the ground beside Ahkeah. Her urgent fingers probed his neck, groping for signs of life. Beneath her touch the Navajo’s skin was as cool and smooth as ivory, stretching taut over ropy cords of muscle and sinew. Pressing deeper, she found his pulse. The beat was thready and erratic. She remembered the sound of the blow, the crack of bone. Dread tightened like a clenched fist around her heart.
She crouched lower, laying her ear against his back to catch the labored rise and fall of his breathing. The aroma of mesquite smoke rose from his threadbare tunic, lingering at the edge of her awareness. Why should she care about this man? she found herself wondering. He was a stranger, almost an enemy, and he had spoken to her as if she were a troublesome child.
The rifle butt had struck just above his temple. She fingered the wound, felt the swelling flesh and the wetness of blood. “We can’t leave him here,” she announced to the soldiers. “Help me get him into the wagon.”
None of the men moved. “He’s just an Injun, miss,” the wagon driver said. “Injuns got hard heads. Afore long, this ’un will wake up sore and stumble on home.”
“And what if he doesn’t wake up?” Miranda flared. “There’s a storm blowing in! If you refuse to take him and he freezes or dies of his injuries out here, I’ll hold every last one of you accountable! Every newspaper and congressman in the country will hear about how you struck down an unarmed Indian and left him to die!”
None of the men responded, but she could sense their minds working, weighing her threat. Her father was a powerful man, and her influence on him could make life uncomfortable for them all.
At last the senior outrider, a sergeant, cleared his throat and spat in the alkali dust. “Load him in the damned wagon. When we get to the fort, we can dump him off at the Injun hospital.” He glared irritably at two of the men. “You! Move!”
“Watch his head.” Miranda hovered anxiously as the two soldiers lifted the unconscious Navajo and carried him toward the buckboard. His length sagged between them, one limp hand dragging in the dust. They hefted him high and rolled him onto the bed like the carcass of a freshly killed buck.
Miranda stifled a little cry as his body struck the planks. She paused to snatch up her discarded cloak from the ground. Then, without waiting for assistance, she scrambled up beside him and gathered his battered head into her lap. “Go,” she said to the driver. “Hurry.”
The wagon jounced over the rutted road as the mules broke into a trot. Miranda covered Ahkeah’s chilled body with the cloak and cradled his head to lessen the jarring. Tending injured men was nothing new to her. Her maternal uncle, Dr. Andrew Cavanaugh, who’d taken her in when her mother died, had spent the Civil War stationed at a Boston military hospital. With so many wounded to tend, he’d had little choice except to press his young niece into service. There was little in the way of grief and misery that Miranda had not seen. Perhaps that was why, when the war ended and she was able to resume her schooling, she had chosen to train not as a nurse, but as a teacher.
“Just think of it!” she had exclaimed to her disappointed uncle. “If we can teach children kindness and tolerance before they’re grown, perhaps there’ll be no more need for war!”
Miranda’s own words came back to haunt her now as she nestled the fallen Navajo’s head between her knees. His head wound had stopped bleeding, but his eyes were closed and his breathing was ragged. His pulse fluttered like the wings of a dying bird beneath her fingertips.
She remembered the sight of him, standing in the twilight beside his horse. His gaze had pierced her like a blade, touching deep, secret places that had lain undisturbed for all the twenty-two years of her life. Even now that he lay helpless in her lap, the power of his presence left her shaken. No one had ever looked at her with such pure hatred—a hatred that had chilled Miranda to her bones. What chance did her own beliefs stand against such deeply bred hostility? Why hadn’t she stayed in the East, where little more was expected of her than to be sweet, pleasant, ladylike and studious?
One of the outriders had caught Ahkeah’s horse and tied it to the back of the buckboard. When the clouds swept clear of the moon, Miranda could see the barred shadow of its rib cage below the tattered saddle blanket. When they reached the fort she would order the poor creature stabled and fed, she resolved. An animal, at least, would not be too proud to accept a bit of human kindness.
Ahkeah’s head rolled in her lap. He moaned softly, but his eyes did not open. Miranda gazed down at his moon-chiseled features—the jutting ledges of his cheekbones, the fine, straight nose, the long jawbones that met in a prominent, stubborn chin. His eyes lay in deep pools of shadow within the sockets of his skull. There was nothing to his face but skin and bone, and little more to his rangy body. All the same this Navajo was a riveting figure of a man—a wild hawk, lying broken and wounded in her arms, exuding a savagery that burned behind the lids of his closed eyes, searing her senses.
His limbs twitched like a dreaming animal’s as he moaned again, struggling in the depths of his darkness. Miranda’s fingers brushed back a tendril of night-black hair from his forehead. His skin was like polished jade, the hair stiff with alkali dust.
She thought of Phillip, his blue eyes, his fine, pale hair and his gentle ways. Dear heaven, what she wouldn’t give to be with him now, away from this bleak desert and this frightening man.
“It’s all right,” she whispered, remembering that seemingly unconscious people had been known to hear what was said to them. “You’ve got a head injury—perhaps a serious one. We’re taking you to the hospital at the fort. You’ll be looked after properly there.”
Had she felt his body jerk? The slight, convulsive shudder passed like a ripple beneath the woolen cloak and was gone.
“Ahkeah?” Could he really have heard her speak? Bending closer, Miranda gazed at him intently, but he did not move. Only his ragged, shallow breathing and the elusive flutter of his pulse told her he was alive.
Why did you hit him so hard? she wanted to scream at the soldier who’d crashed the rifle butt into Ahkeah’s dark head. Was it hatred, fear or simple stupidity? Miranda kept her silence, knowing that it was too late for outrage—and knowing, too, that this man could not be lost to his people. Whatever it took, whatever influence she could wield, she would see that he got the best possible care.
“Beggin’ your pardon, miss.” The driver’s twangy voice broke into her thoughts. “If there’s any chance that Injun can hear you, you’d best not say nothin’ ’bout the hospital.”
