'Do not beg.' 'I--I never beg,' she said, but the words came out in a
whisper. She wasn't certain if they were defiant or merely pathetic. It
didn't matter. He pushed her forward, then tossed her over his shoulder
again.
'No!' she protested wildly. She hit his back, but he did not notice her
frantic effort. She braced against him and screamed, loudly.
desperately.
Jamie. Dear God, where was he now?
Perhaps it did not matter. Perhaps there was no help for either of them
anymore.
That brought him to a halt. He lifted her and slammed her down upon her
knees. She tried to rise, and he pressed her down with such fury that
she went still. He towered over her.
'Savage? You, a white woman, would call me savage? No one knows the
meaning of brutality so well as your own kind. Let me tell you,
Sun-Colored Woman, what the white man, the white soldier has done to us,
to my people.' The moon rose high, shimmering down upon him with sudden
clarity. Nalte, his bronze shoulders slick and heavily muscled, walked
around her.
'In 1862 your General James Carleton sent a dispatch unit through Apache
Pass. Cochise and Mangas Coloradas lay in wait. There was a fierce
battle, and Mangas Coloradas was seized from his horse. He was taken to
Janos, but his followers told the doctors that he must be cured or their
town would be destroyed. So he survived.
'Mangas Coloradas survived so that he could come a year later, under a
flag of truce, to parlay with the soldiers and miners for peace. He was
seized.
Your general ordered that he have Mangas Coloradas the next morning,
alive or dead. So do you know what your civilized white people did to
him?
They heated their bayonets in the fire, and they burned his legs, and
when he protested, they shot him for trying to escape. It was not
enough. They cut off his head, and they boiled it in a large pot. Do you
understand? They boiled his head. But now you would sit there, and you
would tell me that I am savage?'
She wasn't sitting, she was kneeling, in exactly the position in which
he had pressed her. She was trembling, shaking like a leaf blown in
winter, and she was praying that Jamie would arrive and rescue her.
But of course, she didn't know if Jamie was alive or dead. He had faced
Chavez in a knife fight, and she couldn't know the outcome. And now she
was facing an articulate Apache who seemed to have reason to want
vengeance.
'You speak English exceptionally well,' she said dryly. He did not
appreciate her sense of humor. He wrenched her to her feet and pulled
her against him. 'You will find no mercy with me,' he assured her.
'Do not beg.'
'I--I never beg,' she said, but the words came out in a whisper. She
wasn't certain if they were defiant or merely pathetic. It didn't
matter. He pushed her forward, then tossed her over his shoulder again.
'No!' she protested wildly. She hit his back, but he did not notice her
