That was a lot better than standing there and letting the man sink the knife in his chest, though. As the man reeled back a step, Matt grabbed the wrist of his knife hand with both hands and wrenched on it. The Navajo grunted in pain as bones ground together in his wrist and the knife slipped from his fingers.
The warrior swung a left at Matt’s head. Matt moved aside just enough to cause the blow to glance off his ear. It hurt anyway.
Matt hooked a left of his own to the Navajo’s jaw. He knew that the longer this fight lasted, the less chance he had. The wound he had suffered and the long days of lying around had depleted his reserves of strength. He was already breathing hard, and his pulse hammered inside his skull in a wild, discordant drumbeat.
A loud, angry voice bellowed words Matt didn’t understand, but the tone of command was unmistakable. The man he’d been battling abruptly stepped back. The man’s chest heaved, and his face was flushed and twisted with fury. But with a visible effort, he restained himself from attacking Matt again.
Caballo Rojo stalked up and planted himself between Matt and his opponent. For a moment the chief shouted at the warrior who’d been manhandling Elizabeth.
Then he turned to Matt and said, “White man go back in hogan!”
“I didn’t do anything,” Matt protested. He pointed at Elizabeth. “I was just protecting Miss Fleming!” He looked at her. “What in blazes is this all about, anyway?”
Elizabeth was pale and obviously upset.
“The young women have been gossiping about us, Matt. Pino here thinks that I’m corrupting them by being here. Many of the Navajo harbor such resentment toward white people that they don’t like me being here in the first place.”
“So he was trying to get you to leave?”
“Yes, and some of them think we should both go.” Elizabeth shook her head. “But I won’t leave, not as long as I can help these people.”
Whatever she was teaching them, Matt had his doubts about how much it really helped the Navajo. He wasn’t sure a young woman from Vermont could know anything that would help these people survive in this rugged wilderness.
Even so, he wasn’t going to stand by and let her be mistreated. That went too much against the grain.
On a practical level, however, there wasn’t much he could do. A number of men had gathered, and from the way they were glaring at Matt it was obvious whose side they were on. Outnumbered, weak, and wounded as he was, he couldn’t stop Pino from doing whatever he wanted.
Caballo Rojo leveled an arm.
“Go back in hogan,” he ordered Matt again.
“You’re gonna just let him get away with it?” Matt demanded. He didn’t expect Caballo Rojo to do otherwise, but it wouldn’t hurt anything to try ... he hoped.
Caballo Rojo didn’t budge. His face was hard as a rock as he pointed at the hogan. Matt reined in the anger he felt boiling up inside him.
He wouldn’t be doing Elizabeth any good by getting himself killed, and Caballo Rojo looked just about riled up enough to go back on his word.
Matt jerked his head in a curt nod.
“All right,” he said. “But this is wrong.”
“Wrong for white man not wrong for Navajo,” Caballo Rojo insisted.
Matt looked at Elizabeth and said, “Sorry.”
“I appreciate you trying to stand up for me, Mr. Bodine.”
He took a deep breath.
“Maybe when I leave here, you ought to go with me.”
“No, I don’t think so. Like I told you, I intend to stay. But when you’re gone ...”
She didn’t have to finish what she was saying. When he was gone, then the young women of the clan wouldn’t have anything to gossip about where he and Elizabeth were concerned. The trouble would probably blow over.
Fine, he thought. If that was the way she wanted it, he could oblige her.
“As soon as I’m strong enough to ride, I’ll head out. I need to catch up to Sam, anyway.”
Elizabeth nodded and said, “Of course.”
With a last glare directed at Pino, Matt turned toward the hogan. Juan Pablo’s wife had come out to watch the confrontation. He brushed past her and went inside. He heard a lot of low-voiced talking outside, but he didn’t understand it and didn’t care.
He told himself he didn’t care, anyway. It was easier like that.
But not by much.
The canyon settled down as night fell. The brief ruckus between Matt and Pino seemed forgotten. Juan Pablo’s wife gave Matt his supper, as usual, and this time when she removed the poultices from his wounds, she didn’t pack more in there.
Instead, she simply covered the bullet holes with a thin layer of moss and bound it into place as a makeshift bandage. Matt took that to mean they thought he no longer needed the medicinal powers of the roots and herbs the woman had been using on him.
His sleep was restless again that night. He couldn’t stop thinking about Elizabeth and wondering how she was doing. He admired her determination but questioned her good judgment.
The next morning he slipped on the wool shirt again and left the hogan. The woman didn’t even try to discourage him this time. He supposed she had given up on getting him to do what she wanted him to do.
He didn’t know where Pino’s hogan was, or he would have avoided it. He definitely didn’t want to encounter Caballo Rojo this morning, either, so he steered clear of the chief ’s hogan and walked along the creek toward the mouth of the canyon instead.
He wouldn’t get too close to it, he decided, because he didn’t want to alarm the guards posted there, but walking part of the way and then coming back would be good exercise for him.
None of the Navajo tried to stop him as he left the hogan, although he saw several of them watching him. He supposed they knew he wasn’t a prisoner here, so he couldn’t be trying to escape. When he came closer to the mouth of the canyon, he was able to see out over the vast sweep of the plains, and it looked mighty appealing to him. He had always been fiddle-footed by nature and never liked to stay in one place for too long.
Luckily, Sam was the same way, so they had always been good trail partners as well as blood brothers.
Matt stopped suddenly and frowned as he spotted something unusual out on the prairie. Several miles east of the canyon, a large cloud of dust rose into the morning sky.
His first thought was that it might be coming from a cavalry patrol, but after watching the cloud for a few minutes, Matt decided it was unlikely so much dust would be kicked up by horseback riders.
That looked more like the sort of dust cloud that would come from a herd of buffalo on the move, or a bunch of cattle being driven to market.
Out here in this big, mostly empty country, only one of those things was a possibility. The closest buffalo herds were hundreds of miles away, in western Texas.
There were some ranches in these parts, though, and the punchers who worked on them might be moving some cattle.
Matt wished he was out there on a good horse, getting a close look at whatever was going on. He didn’t have any particular reason for feeling that way, just curiosity and restlessness. He watched the dust cloud until it finally moved out of sight to the northwest. The wall of the canyon itself cut the cloud off from his vision.
He turned to walk back toward the hogans. As he did, his instincts told him he was being watched. He looked along the creek and thought he saw a flash of movement from the brush that lined the stream. Matt headed in that direction, but when he got there he didn’t see anyone.
Maybe it was his imagination, he told himself, although he didn’t really believe that. He had never been the sort to see things that weren’t there.
No, it was more likely that someone had been spying on him, he decided. Elizabeth, maybe? She could have noticed him leaving the hogans and followed him out here, even though she had to know by now that wouldn’t be a wise thing to do.