“I think—” she began, but he interrupted her, holding up a hand.

  “You die and our child dies with you, Gaye. It will be a heavy price to pay.”

  “I’ll win, husband. I want to. Want to!”

  The Chiricahua had watched the exchange with some interest, though none of them had good enough English to follow what was said.

  Cuchillo turned back to the chief. “She will fight, Angry River.”

  “It is good.”

  Shadow Voice nodded, twisting his lips into something that was supposed to be a smile. “I kill her slow, and you see it.” Deliberately using English to try and upset Gaye. Who raised the tips of her fingers to her lips and blew him a kiss.

  The place for the fight was easily picked. A couple of hundred paces beyond the perimeter of the Chiricahua camp was a narrow plateau, the rock rising towards the higher ground in natural steps. There, the whole tribe had gathered to watch the unique conflict.

  “What weapon does your woman want, Cuchillo Oro?” asked Angry River.

  “I’ll use my knife, here,” she told her husband when he relayed the question to her.

  “He will fight with spear and knife.”

  “Let him.”

  “He can attack you and keep his distance with the spear.”

  “Then it’s surely up to me to close in on him. He’s smaller than me, husband. I have no fear of him. Remember that I have looked after myself for some years in a harsh and inhospitable world.”

  So it was. Shadow Voice with his war spear and his knife, starting at one end of the arena. Gaye, her skirts tucked up and pinned above her knees, showing her riding-boots and shapely calves. The spurs on her boots glittered in the bright sunlight. She held the knife clumsily in her right hand.

  Cuchillo saw this and went to give her advice, standing in close and whispering. “Do not hold knife that way. If you cut from above then he can stop the—”

  “Hush, husband. I know what I’m doin’ here. And I know how to hold a knife. Don’t worry.” He turned away and she caught at his arm.

  “What is it?”

  “Something I want to say.”

  “Afterwards.”

  “No. Now. Might not be an afterwards, dearest.”

  Angry River called out to them. “Shadow Voice is ready.”

  “Soon,” replied Cuchillo, waving a hand at the Chiricahua chief. “Go on with your words, Gaye. I listen.”

  She held him by the arm, but he didn’t pull away. Looking down into her dark eyes, aware as she pressed close against him of the slight swelling in her stomach with the coming child.

  “I just want to say that you are my life, Cuchillo. When I heard that little dog with his harsh words and threats, I knew … knew that I couldn’t live without you. And I can’t live forever in your shadow. I’m my own woman, darling Cuchillo, and I must fight for what I believe. But if I am slain, then know that I die with your face in my mind and your name blazoned upon my heart. I love you, dearest, and I have had greater happiness with you than I would have believed possible.”

  “I love you, Gaye. I know that in my heart. And I wish to be with you until we are taken by death.”

  She kissed him quickly on the cheek, light as a moth’s wing. Then she pushed him gently away from her and walked to where Shadow Voice waited.

  Cuchillo went and stood by Angry River and the elders of the Chiricahua, feeling his throat dry, his heart pounding beneath his ribs at the tension.

  “This fight is to the death,” called the chief. Asking Cuchillo whether his squaw understood that.

  “No mercy, Gaye,” he called, and his wife nodded her agreement.

  “Then fight!” called Angry River.

  Shadow Voice shifted his feet in the loose sand, feeling for a purchase. He held the long spear in his right hand, ready to either throw it or to lunge at the woman. The point was decorated with a cluster of feathers and a strip of pale green ribbon.

  Gaye stood calmly waiting, the hilt of the butcher’s knife gripped tight, still held with the point downwards.

  The Chiricahua shuffled a few steps closer to her, feinting to throw the spear. The white woman never moved. Calling out suddenly in a clear voice.

  “You need such a great weapon to beat a poor woman, do you, warrior? Ask him, Cuchillo, in his own tongue.”

  He did as she asked and was rewarded with a great cry of laughter from the watching Indians. Shadow Voice was quickly mocked by his fellows, and his eyes narrowed in anger. Finally he threw the spear.

  He threw it away from him, in the opposite direction from the white woman. Gaye gave Cuchillo a quick smile at her success in making the warrior do what she had hoped.

  Shadow Voice was still utterly, contemptuously confident of victory. He had planned in his own mind how he would do it. Disarm her first. It’d be easy with the foolish way the woman held her clumsy blade. Then he’d cut her about the body so that her dress would fall from her and she and the mighty Cuchillo Oro would both be shamed. Perhaps before he killed her it might be possible to use her for his own needs. It was a good thought.

  He moved in towards her. Grinning as she backed away nearer the edge of the low cliff, waving her knife at him in a feeble gesture of defiance.

  It was going to be very easy.

  “Come and die quick,” he said to her.

  “My stars,” she muttered, seeing him closing in on her.

  It was going to be so very easy.

  In under that pathetic butcher’s knife, with an easy upwards parry. And a cut across the bodice of the dress. Seeing her with so much of her legs exposed filled the Chiricahua with a violent lust. Lust that blinded him to the way she changed her grip on the knife as he came snaking in at her.

  Moving it from overhand to underhand.

  Anyone with the least knowledge of fighting with knives knows that the most difficult of blows to counter is the one that comes biting in at your belly and groin from beneath.

  That was what Gaye Turner did to Shadow Voice.

  Whipping the knife up at his stomach with all of her considerable strength and speed. The warrior had been thinking about how he would spread those firm thighs and thrust himself between them, before slitting her pale neck.

  When he felt a stinging pain.

  Warmth seeping over his thighs, and then a sudden cold. He leaped back, left hand feeling down. Finding the shirt torn, and wetness, sticky to his touch. He paused and gave way to the natural impulse to look down and see what the white woman had done to him.

  Cuchillo saw the blood springing from the deep stab in the warrior’s guts. It soaked quickly through his clothes and ran down his legs to drip into the dry dirt.

  “Again, Gaye!!” he shouted, seeing that she had hesitated to gaze at what she had done.

  Angry River spoke quietly. “Your father’s father, the mighty Mangas Coloradas, said that he who stands to watch his first blow succeed will—”

  The Mimbreños interrupted the older man to finish the saying. “Will never live to strike a second.”

  Gaye moved. Cutting sideways with the keen edge of her knife, slashing at the man’s arm, making him drop his own weapon. Standing in close and looking him in the face. Taunting him.

  “You are slow and old. Even a feeble white woman can make you look foolish, Shadow Voice. Soon your body will also be a shadow and the women will tell of this killing and laugh at your memory.”

  “Noooooooo!!!” yelled the Apache, diving low to try and scoop up his single-edged knife in his left hand.

  But the woman was ready for him. Kicking out, catching him on the knee with the toe of her boot. Everyone there heard the thin crack of bone and the Apache toppled sideways like a storm-struck tree, screaming out in pain, grabbing at his leg as he fell.

  Cuchillo held his breath, knowing that this was the moment. If Gaye was careless, it was the time that the man might still take her. Anyone was at their most vulnerable when they thought that victory lay in their hands. But his wife was even better than he’d suspected.

  She held off the injured Indian for a few moments while she checked that he wasn’t shamming. Shadow Voice rolled over, managing to get to a crippled, half-crouched position, keeping his broken knee under him as he looked up at the white woman. Gaye still held the bloodied knife in her right hand.

  “Said I’d kill you, you bastard,” she said, in a pleasant, conversational voice. It was as if she was at a ladies’ social discussing the flavor of the homemade preserves.

  The Chiricahua watching all expected that she would go in with the knife. And the injured man was ready for it, eyes fixed on the blood-slick metal of the blade. Gaye had other ideas.

  With an elegant sidestep, as though it was an intricate and well-practiced dance movement, she came in with a sweeping kick again, this time catching the hapless Shadow Voice across the side of the neck, sending him spinning on his back. He lay there, fighting for breath, trying to yell, his voice shattered by the savage blow.

  “Now,” whispered Cuchillo.

  His wife needed no urging.

  The warrior was quite helpless, eyes shut, his broken knee crooked, the whiteness of jagged bone sticking through torn flesh. His legs were apart and she moved around, this time choosing her target with some care. Three quick steps in and a half-jump, turning in the air so that she came down squarely on his groin, the heels of her boots grinding into the Indian’s genitals, crushing them against the hard cage of pelvic bone.

  “It is done,” Cuchillo heard Angry River say, at his elbow.

  Shadow Voice didn’t even manage a scream. The pain swept him into unconsciousness and he lay quite still, his only movement was the convulsive opening and closing of the fingers of his left hand.

  Gaye dropped astride the unconscious man, her spurs digging great tears in the bloodied shirt, ripping fresh wounds in the skin of his chest and ribs. Her skirt pinned up high over her thighs.

  Shadow Voice opened his eyes at that moment, blinking through the white lances of agony that punched through his body. Though his sight was blurred he was aware of a great weight on his chest, making it hard to breathe. The woman was … she was sitting on him, her thighs spread wide as an eagle’s wings, naked to him. He could see the narrow vee of her white cotton drawers, even make out the curling tendrils of dark hair.

  Despite everything the Indian began to become erect at the vision. Gaye saw his eyes opening and took the knife, pushing back at the Chiricahua’s chin with her left hand. Cutting firmly through the great artery that throbbed beneath the man’s ear. She ducked away at the welter of blood that fountained out several feet in the silent air. She sliced deeply through, clean into Shadow Voice’s windpipe so that the blood frothed and bubbled into his lungs.

  With an easy grace she pushed herself upright, standing astride the dying man, staring intently down into his veiled eyes. Calmly, with great deliberation, Gaye spat in his upturned face. For one frozen moment Cuchillo thought that his wife was about to stoop and castrate the Chiricahua, but she stepped away from him, sheathing the long-bladed knife.

  “There, husband,” she called. “Is that enough?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it is enough.”

  Chapter Nine

  THE APACHES WERE subdued, the whole tribe feeling a sense of shame at the way that the white woman had come among them and so easily slain one of their finest and most experienced warriors. But there was no bitterness directed against Cuchillo or Gaye. Indeed, Angry River even managed to turn the moment with an ironic jest.

  Cuchillo Oro had insisted that he would only agree to ride with the Chiricahua if they would provide his wife with a guard for their spread. Two of the older men were to go back with her and keep her safe.

  The chief gestured at the corpse of Shadow Voice. “I think that it is best your woman keeps our men safe. For she is truly a great fighter and worthy as the squaw of the famous Cuchillo Oro.”

  He translated it for Gaye, who smiled her appreciation of the chief’s words.

  It had been agreed that Cuchillo would return for one day to their spread, to put all his affairs in order. The two older men of the Chiricahua who went with him and Gaye were called Many Winters and Red Eye, and they had sworn their loyalty to the white woman. They promised that they would guard her against any attack, and would also help her around the two thousand acres while Cuchillo was away with the rest of the fighting men.

  Angry River had said that they would meet again with the lone warrior on the south side of the San Piedro, fifteen miles off from Harlan Springs. There would be four hands of Chiricahua, against a reported five hands of Mexicans and border gunmen. Plus the red-headed Oakley and his ramrod, O’Connor. Reasonably even odds, and the Apaches hoped to have the vital element of surprise on their side.

  The two Indians were out in the barn, resting and talking quietly to each other after their meal which was cooked by Gaye. She and Cuchillo were relaxing in their own living room. Coffee bubbled and steamed on the fire in the kitchen, filling the house with its scent.

  The Apache stared out of the window, into the darkening evening, his mind filled with the battle that he knew he would be fighting within the next couple of days. Gaye was sewing at the quilt, carefully cutting out the shapes with the glittering scissors.

  “Husband.”

  “What is it?”

  “Will it be well?”

  “I think we will win. The Chiricahua are good fighters and the Mexicans will not look for us. Cuchillo says that the secret blow can sometimes end the fight at its start.”

  “I fear for us.”

  He stood and walked to stand behind her chair, running the fingers of his left hand through her long dark hair. He caressed the nape of her neck. Feeling again the pride that had burst through him as she had slaughtered the venomous Shadow Voice earlier in the day.

  She repeated it. “I am afraid, my dearest. After so much sadness in my life, we are now on the brink of great happiness. Our child will be born in a few months and then all will be perfect for us.”

  “Oakley must die.”

  “Yes,” she said, lifting her hand from the sewing and placing the scissors in the center of the table. She rested her fingers on his. “I know that. But I have this feeling, deep in my heart.”

  “What?”

  “That you will not return.”

  “If there is life in my body, then I shall come back to you, Gaye.”

  “If you do not, then I shall take my own life, Cuchillo, that I swear.”

  “You must live for our son, wife.”

  “I would not wish it. Life without you would be hollow. Empty. I would see only the blackness of midnight and feel only the cold wind that blows between heaven and earth. Life without you is not possible, my dear. You can see that, can you not?”

  Cuchillo nodded silently. He knew that his feelings for this woman were stronger than anything he had ever felt before. And he knew that she loved him as well. Perhaps loved him more. He had always mistrusted words, knowing that they sometimes came cheaply. But he believed Gaye.

  And loved her deeply.

  They went early to their bed that night. Gaye had ridden into town and bought a bottle of whiskey from the saloon. Telling anyone who asked her that Cuchillo was off on a hunting trip to the south but that two Indians were there to watch over the place while he was away. It was better to tell them than to let them find out for themselves.

  She and Cuchillo drank nearly all of the fiery liquor between them, sitting together in their wide bed, sipping it from tumblers. Becoming a little drunk. Becoming even more affectionate.

  And happy.

  Loving.

  Their first coupling was hectic, violent. She clung to him as though she was drowning in a wild river, digging her nails into his broad shoulders, biting him on the side of the neck. Setting her teeth into his lip so that they both tasted the saltiness of sweet blood.

  He took her, ramming himself between her spread thighs, intending to be gentle and careful, for the sake of the growing child that was unfolding within her. But his need was fired by her own desire and he rode Gaye hard. Feeling her hips grinding upwards against him at every movement, her sighing filling his ears as it pounded to a crescendo.

  At the end he had to lift the feather pillow and hold it down over her face to muffle her screams as she came to a climax moments before he did.

  Afterwards she cried a little.

  Holding onto him, but this time with a yearning need. The passion was spent and all that was left was the certain knowledge of their separation. The fear that after that night they might never see each other again. Oakley might win. Cuchillo might die.

  “I meant what I said, my loved one,” she said, calmer at last.

  “What, Gaye?”

  “I could not bear to face life without you. Not even a child would console me against such a deep loss.”

  “I think that we will win.”

  “You think …” her words muffled by her face resting against his naked chest. Her legs were pressed to his, her right hand reaching across his muscular stomach. Finding him. Holding him. Feeling the instantaneous reaction to her touch.

  “Yes. I think we win. You will be safe. Oakley will die. And—”

  “We all live happily ever after. Just like in the story books, Cuchillo, my dearest heart of hearts. If only it can be so.”

  “It will be sunshine.”

  “Too many clouds for that. I just feel inside me that it won’t—” She laughed. “Hell! I’m bein’ plain and simple foolish, husband. And by what’s happening in my hand here, I guess that we’d best stop talking for a whiles. What do you say?”

  But he was too busy to reply.

  During the night Cuchillo Oro rose silently from their cool bed, leaving Gaye sleeping, and walked outside. He stood naked on the porch and looked out over the land. The land that belonged to him and to his wife. And would one day be passed on to his son. The moon threw sharp shadows across the draws and arroyos, gouging great black scars out of the ribbed flanks of the silver mountains away to the north.

  The wind was rising, bringing cool air from the high peaks to the west. Cuchillo sniffed at the air, tasting the scent of a fire burning in one of the yards along main street in the township.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10