Several men who appeared to be about Caballo Rojo’s age sat around the fire with him. They would be the chief ’s inner circle, his most trusted advisers. One of them was probably a shaman.
Caballo Rojo spoke respectfully to the women, who stopped what they were doing and left the hogan. Whatever would be said in here was for the men.
With a brusque gesture, Juan Pablo motioned for Sam to sit down. They took their seats on blankets.
Having grown up in a Cheyenne village, Sam found all this familiar despite the significant differences in the Navajo culture. He knew that if he stayed in surroundings like this for very long, he would start thinking and acting like an Indian again. That part of his heritage was never far from the surface.
Now that Sam had a better look at Caballo Rojo, he saw why the man had been given that name. Sam had assumed at first that Caballo Rojo had ridden a red horse at some time or another, but instead the man’s long, narrow face had a definite horse-like shape to it.
Caballo Rojo spoke, and Juan Pablo translated for him.
“Did you and your friend come to this land in search of the Navajo?”
Sam shook his head.
“We were simply riding through the area. We bear your people no ill will.”
Juan Pablo translated again, then said, “Caballo Rojo has promised you the hospitality of our people. You and your friend will be safe as long as you remain here. We will do our best to nurse your friend back to health, and then you will be free to leave.”
“Tell Caballo Rojo I am very grateful to him. I promise on behalf of myself and my friend to repay his kindness.”
Sam finally began to relax. It looked like he and Matt might live through the day after all, he thought.
Matt had no idea where he was when he opened his eyes, but he was glad to be there for a couple of reasons.
One was that he was still alive.
The other was that he was looking into the prettiest pair of green eyes he had seen in a long time.
Sam must have found a town, Matt thought. He remembered the fight in the arroyo but nothing after that. Now he was lying on a featherbed and had a good-looking redheaded nurse leaning over him.
Then he realized that the bed wasn’t soft at all, but hard instead, as if he were lying on the ground. As his vision cleared even more, he realized that wasn’t a roof over his head but rather the curving roof of an Indian hogan. And as for the “nurse” ...
Well, she was a green-eyed redhead, no doubt about that, but she was dressed like an Indian woman and when she spoke the words made no sense to him.
Matt figured whatever she had said to him was in an Indian language. Navajo, probably, given the area through which he and Sam had been traveling when they were ambushed.
Matt was fluent in Cheyenne and could get by in several other tongues spoken by the tribes on the northern plains, but Navajo was mostly a mystery to him.
His side hurt where he’d been shot, but not as much as he expected it to. He heard someone else moving around in the hogan and turned his head slightly to see another woman. She was older than the redhead and obviously an Indian. Matt figured the two of them had patched up his wounds.
He wasn’t sure how he’d ended up in a Navajo hogan or what in blazes that good-looking redhead was doing here. The Navajo didn’t take white captives like some tribes did.
But those questions could wait. Right now he wanted to make sure his blood brother was still all right.
“Do you know where Sam is?” he asked the redhead. “Sam Two Wolves?” Matt made a guess. “The man who brought me here?”
The redhead replied in whatever language she’d been speaking before. Matt tried to pick up some of it, but he couldn’t figure out what she was saying. After a moment, though, she repeated, “Sam?”
Matt nodded.
“Yeah. Sam. Big fella.” He tried to gesture to indicate what he meant. “Half Cheyenne.”
The young woman just stared at him for a second and then abruptly burst out laughing.
“Your friend Sam is fine,” she told Matt in perfect English. “And I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have teased you like that. You just looked so puzzled and confused I couldn’t resist.”
Suddenly angry, he tried to sit up, but she put a hand on his shoulder and held him down. That made him aware that he was no longer wearing his shirt. No great loss, since it had a couple of bullet holes in it and had been soaked with his blood. The lightheadedness he felt now was probably a result of all the blood that had leaked out of him.
He was able to prop himself up on an elbow and look down at his side. He couldn’t see the wound on his back, but the one in his side was covered with a poultice of some sort. He figured the hole in his back was being treated the same way.
Matt let himself relax on the thick pile of blankets. They weren’t a featherbed after all, he thought, but they were fairly comfortable.
“Who are you?” he asked the redhead. He wanted to express his gratitude for their help, but he was a mite peeved at the moment.
Also, his uncertainty about Sam’s fate, regardless of what the redhead had said, plagued him, but he was too weak to get up, and chances were the young woman wouldn’t let him, anyway. She wore a determined look on her face.
“My name is Elizabeth Fleming,” she said. “You should lie back down. You lost a lot of blood.”
