Another woman stepped through the dwelling’s door as Sam and Juan Pablo approached with Matt between them.
This woman glanced at Sam, and he felt a shock go through him as he saw her long, curly red hair and brilliant green eyes. Despite the green shirt and long calico skirt she wore, like the Navajo women, she was white, and from the looks of her, as Irish as she could be.
Chapter 6
Sam tore his eyes away from the young woman. He didn’t want to offend Juan Pablo by staring at her. He wasn’t afraid of the Navajo warrior, but since Juan Pablo and his wife were going to take care of Matt, it wouldn’t be polite to stare.
Juan Pablo motioned for Sam to enter the hogan. He did so, stepping past the redheaded woman, who held the entrance flap open.
A small fire smoldered in the rock-lined pit in the center of the hogan. The smoke curled up and out the opening at the top of the shelter. That opening let in a shaft of afternoon sunlight that revealed a thick pile of blankets.
Sam and Juan Pablo lowered Matt onto the blankets and rolled him onto his left side. The woman knelt beside him and pulled up his shirt so she could examine his wounds. She plucked the blood-soaked wads of cloth from the bullet holes and tossed them into the fire.
“My wife will tend to his wounds,” Juan Pablo told Sam. “Come with me.”
Sam hesitated.
“I’d rather stay here with my blood brother.”
“You do not trust us?” Juan Pablo snapped.
“Of course I trust you,” Sam replied, although if he had been honest, his answer would have been No, I don’t trust you. Not completely.
But that would be an insult, and Sam knew it would be a mistake to push this proddy Navajo warrior too far. He went on, “Where are we going?”
“To see Caballo Rojo.”
Sam nodded.
“Good. I want to thank him again for his hospitality. And you, too, of course.”
Juan Pablo just gave one of his skeptical grunts.
The redheaded woman had followed them into the hogan. As the two men turned to leave, she stepped aside from the entrance. Juan Pablo went past her without even a glance.
Sam tried to do the same, but it was difficult. He hadn’t expected to find someone like her in this Navajo camp.
The canyon was still in a mild state of excitement as Juan Pablo led Sam through it. The people who lived here probably didn’t see visitors very often.
Juan Pablo took Sam to the largest hogan along the stream, which evidently belonged to Caballo Rojo, or rather to his wife, given the matriarchal nature of these people. He went to the entrance and spoke, and Caballo Rojo answered from inside. Juan Pablo jerked his head at Sam, who went first.
Caballo Rojo sat cross-legged on a buffalo robe near the fire. Several women, ranging in age from their teens to their late thirties, bustled around the hogan, engaged in various chores. The younger ones would be Caballo Rojo’s daughters, the older ones his wife and possibly her sisters.
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.