Hendel say the Indians call him?”
“Usen,” Cynthia said.
“Usen, yes. Perhaps Usen is popping corn.”
Cynthia laughed. “Why, Jay, you do have a sense of humor,” she said. “I am surprised.”
“I meant it as sarcasm, my dear, not as humor,” Bixby said. “Oh, why did I ever think I might want to live out here?”
“But all you have to do is look around to answer that question,” Cynthia said. “Why, I think it is beautiful out here. See the way the sun plays upon the mountains? And look at all the different colors it displays. It is magnificent.”
“Only a fool could see beauty in this wild, trackless land,” Bixby said bitterly.
Suddenly, over a ridge just before them, ten Indians appeared. The Indians drew back quickly, as surprised to see Bixby and Cynthia as
“Oh, my God! Indians!” Bixby shouted in sudden panic.
Delshay held up his hand to stop the others and, for a long moment, the ten Indians just sat their mounts, looking at the strange sight of a white man and a white woman walking along the road all alone. Neither Delshay nor any of his men made a sound.
“Please, please, don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!” Bixby pleaded. Putting his hands on Cynthia’s shoulders, he shoved her forward.
“Take her!” he said. “Do you see how beautiful she is? I know that Indians like white women. Take her, I give her to you!”
“Jay! What are you doing?” Cynthia asked, shocked by her husband’s action.
“Kill him,” Delshay said, pointing to the white man.
One of Delshay’s men raised his club and started toward Bixby. He stopped when he saw the front of Bixby’s pants suddenly grow wet. Realizing what had just happened, he laughed and pointed, then spoke in Apache.
“Look! The white man is so afraid that he has wet his pants!”
The others laughed and Bixby, realizing that the laughter was at his expense, began shaking and weeping.
“Wait,” Delshay said. “Do not kill him.”
The warrior who had started forward stopped.
“White man,” Delshay said in English. “Would you give your woman to us to spare your life?”
“Yes! Yes!” Bixby said, nodding fiercely. “You can have her! I give her to you.”
Delshay pointed to the west, in the same direction that the white man and the white woman had been walking. “Go,” he said. “I will not kill you.”
“Thank you, thank you,” Bixby said. He looked at Cynthia for a long moment, his expression a mixture of fear, shame, and guilt. “Cynthia, I—I am sorry,” he said.
Bixby started walking west, but the walk quickly turned into a run as he hurried to get away from them before the leader of the Indians changed his mind.
Cynthia watched Bixby leave; then she turned to look into the face of the leader.
Perhaps it was shock, the shock of the attack, of seeing Bixby dissolve in panic, or of realizing that he had just traded her life for his. Whatever it was, it took away all her own fear.
One of the Indians pointed to her.
“I claim this woman as mine,” a warrior named Nalyudi, or He Runs About, said, though as he was speaking in his own language, Cynthia had no idea what he was saying.
“No, she will not be anyone’s woman,” Delshay replied, speaking in English. Then he added in his own language, “She is a woman with powerful medicine. We will honor that medicine.”
“She has no medicine,” Nalyudi said.
“She has not shown fear,” Delshay said.
“She will show fear of me,” Nalyudi said. Nalyudi was an anomaly among the Apache. While most Apache were relatively short, Nalyudi was well over six feet tall and was powerfully built.
“No, I think not. I think Mountain Lion Woman is without fear in her eyes.”
“Mountain Lion Woman?” Nalyudi asked. “You have given this white woman a name?”
“Yes,”
“I do not believe her medicine is strong enough for you to give her such a name,” Nalyudi said. “I will prove to you that she fears me. Then I will claim her as my woman.”
“She will show no fear,” Delshay said.
Nalyudi raised his war club, and he let out a menacing, bloodcurdling yell.
Cynthia was resigned to dying now, thinking that it might even be preferable to being a prisoner of the Indians. Because of that, the strange, almost numbing calmness that had come over her before was still present. She showed no fear.
“Nalyudi,” Delshay said in English. “Do you agree now that her medicine is strong?”
