“You have done well today, Skylar,” Gatana told her when they had finished the meal. “Your mother would be proud.”
“Thank you,” she replied, trying to smile. “I know my mother would be grateful to you for all you have done to help me.”
“That is nothing,” Gatana said with a shake of her head. “I wish I could do much more. You should not be here.”
“Grandmother thinks otherwise,” Skylar said with a nod toward Tsa’kata, who appeared to be nodding off to sleep but was probably listening to every word. “She believes it is time I learned what it truly means to be an Apache.”
Gatana stroked Skylar’s hair and gently touched her cheek. “If that is your destiny, so be it. Perhaps it was meant for you to journey in this full circle. No one can say what Usen has planned for you.”
“Then I can only await his will.”
Gatana smiled. “Good. You are already learning—but that has always been so, little one. From the time you were first brought to Rancho Verde you learned what was expected of you very quickly. Once you understood that you were in a place of safety, you were eager to please. You have done what you were told and behaved as you were expected to behave.”
“I had no place to go, Gatana. I did not want to be sent away. The Templetons provided me with the same kind of warmth and security I remember receiving from my first mother and father. I would have done—and would still do—anything to keep from dishonoring them.”
Gatana shook her head. “That would not be possible for you, child.”
Tears stung Skylar’s eyes. “I miss them, Gatana.”
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“I know. If Usen wills it, you will see them again soon. But my husband and I have talked and agreed that between now and then we should take you into our family until you can return to yours. If you will allow it, I will be proud to call you daughter for a little while.”
“That would be a great honor.”
Gatana smiled and wiped at the wetness on Skylar’s cheeks. “Then dry your eyes, daughter. There is work to be done.”
“Yes . . . indé’cìmá,” she said. My Apache mother.
Gatana was pleased. After handing Skylar a bowl of rice and beans, she gestured to Consayka. “Here. Take this to your Apache father so that he can share it with the others. It will tell them all that you are his daughter and that you have his protection.”
Though Skylar knew she had nothing to fear from the men who had worked as cowhands on Rancho Verde, she did as Gatana bade her, partly out of obedience, but primarily because it was comforting to feel that she was part of a family again. She loved these people very much, and being one of them would make her separation from her real family a little easier to bear.
She moved to the brave’s fire, and with only a softly spoken “indé’cìtà,”
acknowledging Consayka as her Apache father, she knelt and handed him the bowl. He glanced at her, his eyes smiling warmly, and for a moment Skylar was transported back in time to the nights on Rancho Verde when she had sat across a campfire from this kind old man, listening to the wonderful stories he told. She hesitated a moment, caught in a web of sweet memories of a time that could never come again.
When she finally realized that the other men were looking at her strangely, she stood, and it was everything she could do to keep from crying out as a huge shape materialized in the darkness just beyond the glow of the fire. It moved to the rim of firelight, stopped, and coalesced into an Apache brave.
Skylar’s fright passed quickly, but she was assailed by other, more confusing emotions. She had never seen any man this handsome before. Tall, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, the half-naked brave would have been enough to make any maiden swoon. His coal-black hair, parted in the center, hung loose on one side of his face, flowing around his shoulder. A single braid hung from the other side, the end tipped with a feather that dangled onto the intricate bone breastplate that covered his chest.
His long legs were encased in buckskin leggings with broad flaps on either side, similar to the chaps worn by cowhands, and a small breechclout hung from his waist to cover the area that would otherwise have been exposed by the cut-away leggings.
The light dancing on his chiseled features made him seem like something from another world, like one of the fearsome Mountain Spirits Consayka had 71
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often told her about. Skylar could barely see his eyes in the darkness, but somehow she sensed that he was looking directly at her. She suddenly found it difficult to breathe.
“A friend might come to sit by the fire of other friends if he knows that he would be welcome,” the brave said in deep-throated Apache.
“A friend would never be turned away from my fire,” Consayka replied in kind. “Sit, my young friend, and share what we have.”
Wordlessly the Apache moved to the fire, choosing a vacant space between two Verde Mescaleros who were dressed in white man’s trousers and calico shirts.
“Daughter, give this to our friend,” Consayka said. He held the bowl up to Skylar, but she didn’t move. “Have you grown roots, daughter?”
The laughter of the braves brought Skylar out of her trance, and she took the bowl, chiding herself for her foolishness. Their visitor was only a man, after all. He was not a Mountain Spirit or any kind of a deity, despite his dramatic, seemingly mystical appearance from out of nowhere. It was only the stress of a long journey and the tension of this difficult day that quickened her heartbeat.
She skirted the circle and knelt beside the visitor. A true Apache maiden would have bowed her head as she offered food to a stranger, but Skylar’s curiosity overwhelmed her knowledge of Mescalero customs. Eager to dispel her image of him as a handsome god, she looked into his face as he turned to her and became instantly lost in a pair of eyes that were as black as the night and as soft as the moon shining on dark water. The eyes regarded her curiously; then a veil fell over them, and he glanced away.
Expecting no thanks for her good deed, for it was not the Apache way, she quickly rose and left the fire.
“Who is he?” Gatana asked as she returned to the women’s camp.
It was difficult for Skylar to remember how to speak. “A visitor who calls himself a friend,” she said finally.
Gatana looked at her questioningly. “Daughter? What is wrong? You sound strange.”
“Nothing, indé’cìmá,” she replied. “The brave appeared so suddenly that he startled me. That’s all.”
“I see,” Gatana said, smiling into the fire as she began clearing away the remnants of their meal.
For the twelfth morning in a row, Rayna walked from her rooms at the Palace Hotel down Washington Street to the headquarters of the Military Department of New Mexico on Palace Avenue. It was a short jaunt she could have made in her sleep, but nothing about her bearing suggested any-72
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thing even remotely resembling somnambulation. Though this daily routine was wearing thin, Rayna had lost none of the ire that she had brought with her to Santa Fe. If anything, the events of the last two weeks had increased her rage.
The moment she arrived in the city, she had gone directly to General Whitlock’s office and discovered that he was gone for the day. She had left a terse message requesting an appointment at his earliest convenience, and she had returned the following day, only to be pawned off on a dim-witted aide-de-camp named Bascomb who didn’t know his hat from a hole in the ground.