Navajo warriors traveled light. Less than ten minutes later, Sam and Juan Pablo rode away from the hogans. Several barking dogs followed them for a while before turning back.
It would take them until the middle of the day to reach the place where Caballo Rojo and his men had found the blood brothers. Sam didn’t want to pass all that time in silence, so after they had ridden for a while, he said, “You speak pretty good English. Did Miss Fleming teach you?”
Juan Pablo didn’t look over at his companion. He kept his eyes turned straight ahead in a haughty glare, and for a moment Sam thought he wasn’t going to answer.
“I learned at one of the missions, years ago, when the white man thought he could keep the Dine penned up like wild animals. Life at the agency was no way for my people to live.”
Sam knew that in many ways, Juan Pablo was right. Reservations and Indian agencies were often badly run, either through greed and corruption or just sheer incompetence. Too many of the people in charge came from back East and had no real idea of how the tribes lived. Their intentions might be good, but their zeal was misguided.
“Lo, the poor Indian!” Sam thought again, not without a trace of bitterness at the way his own people had been treated. The reformers tried to turn their charges into white men, when all that was really needed was a place where the Indians could be left alone without constant encroachment by the whites. It seemed simple to Sam.
But of course, the simple, effective answers were never good enough for government. Not when there could be hordes of rules and regulations and bureaucrats to enforce them.
Once the Indians moved to the reservations, the government tried to run everything about their lives. Someday, it might come to the point where the government tried to do the same to all the country’s citizens. And that day would be the true end of liberty and freedom.
Sam was just thankful that he would be long dead before that ever happened.
“But there were teachers at the agency,” Juan Pablo went on. “Like Miss Fleming, though none of them had hair like flame. They taught us. Or tried to. Most of my people could not or would not learn. Somehow ... the words stuck in my head. I could not get them out, even though I did not really want them.”
Sam thought there was something odd in Juan Pablo’s voice when the man talked about Elizabeth Fleming. The Navajo seemed to despise almost everything about the white men ...
But maybe not Elizabeth.
Sam didn’t let his companion see the frown that creased his forehead. If Juan Pablo had feelings for Elizabeth Fleming, that could lead to trouble sooner or later.
Especially since Matt was back there alone with her now. Sam was confident that Elizabeth wouldn’t return any affection Juan Pablo felt for her, but that might not stop the Navajo from being angry if she got mixed up with Matt.
Before leaving the canyon, Sam had told his blood brother to behave himself.
Now he hoped Matt was doing that in more ways than one.
The knowledge that Sam had gone off on an adventure without him gnawed at Matt’s guts. Sure, he knew he was too weak to stay in the saddle right now, and ten minutes on horseback would probably start blood running from those bullet holes again, but still, it was annoying.
Matt didn’t know what to hope for: that Sam would find those bushwhackers without any trouble and settle their hash for them, or that he’d have to come back here and get Matt to help out like he should have in the first place.
While he was pondering that, he supposed he might as well distract himself in other ways.
Luckily, he had a mighty nice distraction in the person of Miss Elizabeth Fleming.
She spent hours in the hogan, talking to him about growing up as the pampered daughter of a wealthy family that controlled a highly successful shipping line.
“I suppose it was having everything handed to me like that that made me want to do something for people who weren’t so fortunate,” she told him.
“Don’t feel too sorry for the Navajo,” Matt said. “They had it pretty bad when the army rounded them up and forced them all to live down at Bosque Redondo and other agencies like that, but once they were allowed to come back up here to their traditional homeland, they were a lot better off.”
“But they live in ... well, in dirt huts,” Elizabeth said, lowering her voice so Juan Pablo’s wife wouldn’t hear her. “And they raise sheep.”
“Well, I might agree with you about the sheep,” Matt said with the cattleman’s natural disdain for those woolly, bleating creatures. “But as for the rest of it, this is the way the Navajo have always lived. It’s all they know.”
“I suppose you’re right. I can’t help but think they would want to better themselves, though.”
Matt didn’t waste his time arguing with her. Like every professional do-gooder, Elizabeth was convinced she knew what was best for everybody and nothing would shake her from that almost religious conviction.
Anyway, he had a long-standing policy of not arguing too much with pretty, green-eyed redheads, and he didn’t see any reason to change it now.
Elizabeth couldn’t spend all of her time with him, though, and when she wasn’t there he had nothing to do except recuperate from that bullet wound.
Sitting and resting was as boring as all get-out, but Matt forced himself to do it. Any time he heard something going on outside the hogan, he wanted to get up and go see what it was, but he made himself sit quietly.
He slept for a while during the afternoon, then woke up and ate supper with Elizabeth and Juan Pablo’s wife. Juan Pablo hadn’t gotten back yet, or if he had, he hadn’t put in an appearance at the hogan.
Matt dozed off again, gradually settling down into a deep sleep as night closed in around the encampment. He didn’t know how long he had been asleep when something woke him.
His eyes opened. Even wounded, he was fully awake and alert instantly. He couldn’t see anything, but he
