Even the men had a great deal to do that day, but Joe Long Horn and several others took the time to escort the Verde women to the river near midday.
They were all keenly aware of the isolation on the trail, but once they reached the hill overlooking the stream, the number of women grouped in small pockets up and down the banks made Joe feel it was safe to leave Skylar and the others alone. They left with a promise to return shortly.
At first, Skylar felt perfectly safe, but as she and Gatana picked their way through the rocks to the edge of the stream, she realized that the area was more isolated than it had appeared from above. The soldiers were widely scattered, and occasionally she heard one of them in the distance shouting to the women in the water. Once, she looked upstream and saw a soldier standing on a rock overhead, holding out a string of beads. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but his posture and his crude gestures made it clear that he was trying to trade sexual favors for the paltry trinket.
Thoroughly disgusted, Skylar returned to her bathing. Despite the restriction of her clothes, the water felt better than she had imagined anything could feel. It was shallow and swift in many places, but she found a pool deep enough to sit down in, and she let the current wash over her, cooling her skin and rinsing away the stench of the journey. She longed to strip off her overblouse and skirt, but nothing in the world could have made her do something so foolish. Instead, she lived with the limitations, enjoying every second of this respite from weariness.
Unfortunately her pleasure died a violent death when she looked up and saw Talbot and Norris conversing with the soldiers who had been patrolling this section of the stream when Skylar arrived. After a moment the first two disappeared back up the trail, leaving Talbot and Norris alone on a craggy shelf above the stream.
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The changing of the guard? Skylar wondered, fighting down a sense of panic. Or had her tormentor merely traded places with his comrades because he’d seen her coming down the trail?
It really didn’t matter. Skylar knew that she could be in for trouble. To her surprise, Talbot made no effort to climb down to the stream. What he did, instead, proved almost as bad, though. Like the other soldiers she’d heard upstream, he began shouting lurid comments at her. While she was in the water, he shouted in vivid detail the things he wanted to do to her. Skylar never acknowledged him with so much as a look, and certainly none of the soldiers paid any attention—if they heard him at all.
Skylar scrubbed her dress as best she could with it on her, but eventually she had to return to the bank to get the other clothes she had brought to wash. Gatana stayed with her as they knelt on the rocky bed near the shore, and Talbot finally came down from his perch above. Norris stayed where he was, taking advantage of his bird’s-eye view of the river, but the two men still talked back and forth. Or perhaps “argued” would have been a better term for it, since they were debating the issue of sex with white women versus sex with Apaches.
Though Norris was opposed to the latter, Talbot took great pleasure in proudly relating tales about the Apache women he had “had.” The word
“rape” was never used, of course, because taking an Indian against her will wasn’t considered a violent attack and an offense to human decency. Apaches weren’t human, so where was the harm?
Though Skylar tried to shut out his words, which she knew were directed totally at her, she had no language barrier to insulate her from his disgusting barrage. His constant verbal assault made her feel nauseated and weak, and the harder she tried to ignore him, the more abusive he became. Soon her hands were shaking so hard that she couldn’t hold the calico overblouse she’d been trying to scrub against the rocks.
“I cannot stand this any longer,” she said softly to Gatana. “I’ve got to get out of here. Perhaps if I complained to Captain Haggarty . . .”
Gatana kept her head low, not looking up from her washing. “It would do no good, daughter,” she replied. “Finish what you are doing and we will go back to the camp. Joe will come for us soon.”
Collecting her wits, Skylar did the best she could with her clothes and wrung them out. She had volunteered to wash Tsa’kata’s things as well, so the bundle she gathered up when she had finished was a large one. Gatana assembled her own clothes and Consayka’s, and they looked around for Joe, but he was nowhere to be seen. Desperate to escape, they looked for someone else who was ready to walk back to camp and spotted Naka’yen’s wife and two daughters gathering their things.
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Moving downstream, fighting the slippery rocks and current, they tried to hurry toward them.
“Done so soon?” Talbot asked, splashing into the water to catch up with them. “But you didn’t take a good an’ proper bath, Miss Skylar.”
“Stan, don’t,” Norris called after him, but the river swallowed his voice.
The water deepened, forcing Skylar and Gatana onto the shore, and Talbot stayed with them as they moved along the jutting inlets and crags that bordered the stream.
“What’s your hurry, squaw?” Talbot asked, leering down at Skylar. “I been waiting a long time for this.”
“Leave us alone,” Gatana ordered, but Talbot only laughed and ignored her.
“I’ll bet them clothes is heavy, ain’t they, Miss Skylar? Here, let me give you a hand.” He snatched at the bundle in her arms, deliberately knocking it to the ground. “Oh, ain’t that too bad.”
“Stop it! Get away from me,” Skylar demanded as she knelt to pick up the clothes. Gatana stooped to help her, and Talbot squatted beside them.
“I’m sure sorry, ma’am. I am a clumsy oaf. That’s what my mama always used to tell me, an’ she was right,” he said, plucking the garments out of her hands as quickly as she could pick them up.
Trying to quell her trembling, Skylar looked downstream to where Naka’yen’s family had been moments ago. There was no one in sight now, and panic washed through her.
“If you’re lookin’ for help, squaw, ain’t none gonna come,” he said gleefully.
“Get away from me, you foul-mouthed pig!” she said angrily, darting a glance over her shoulder, looking for anyone who might come to her aid, but a huge boulder blocked them from the view of the women and soldiers upstream.
“Ooh-ee, I found me a squaw with a mean temper,” he crowed, grabbing her as she tried to rise.
“Let me go!” she screamed. “Someone help—”
Talbot clamped his hand across her mouth, and Gatana lurched toward him, pushing with one hand on his shoulder while using the other to try to pull Skylar out of his grasp. She shouted for help, but her cry was silenced abruptly when he planted his fist in Gatana’s face. She fell back, cracking her head against a rock, and lay still.
“Gatana!” Skylar struggled to reach her, but Talbot’s hold was unbreakable.
“You pig, let me go. She’s hurt!”
Talbot slapped her across the face, bringing tears to her eyes, but somewhere inside her a wellspring of courage bolstered her and she glared at the private. “You’re not going to hurt me here, you bastard. There are too many people.”
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“What people?” he asked, digging his fingers into one of her breasts. “Ain’t none o’ them Apaches gonna come to help you, an’ none o’ my buddies is gonna stop me, either, squaw. They all want a piece o’ you, too.”
Frantically, Skylar groped for the knife beneath her blouse, but it eluded her as Talbot began struggling to get to his feet, jerking her up with him.