"Let's get in the bedroom. I want you to fall on the bed. I don't want
to hurt you ."
"You must hurt me some."
They walked into the bedroom. Like the kitchen, it was a mess--with the
bed unmade and clothes strewn everywhere.
Anna stood before the bed.
"Now hit me."
Tess closed her eyes and bit her lip. Then she raised the iron skillet
high and brought it crashing down on Anna's head. The woman fell without
a sound.
Panicked Tess checked to see if she had a pulse and if l~er lungs still
rose and fell with her breath. Assured that the woman was alive, she Set
to tying her wrists and ankles and gagging her with the scarves.
She was just finishing the task when the front door slammed open.
Chavez was back!
Tess ran to the rear door. She moved soundlessly and with tremendous
speed, and yet it wasn't enough. The door stuck when she tugged upon it.
Chavez was behind her. He grappled her shoulders and spun her around, a
rich growl thundering against his throat.
Tess stared into his ebony eyes. His fingers closed around her throat.
"You are dangerous! The gringos were right about you! You are trouble
and you need to be taken care of, now?
He was strangling her. She could barely breathe. In desperate
self-defense she brought her knee slamming as hard as she could against
his groin. It was a powerful and direct hit, and Chavez screamed out his
pain, staggering back.
Tess did not want to stay to see if his condition improved. She grabbed
the door again. Gasping, nearly crying, she strained against it.
Then, it opened. She nearly fell against Chavez, it opened so suddenly.
She was about to bolt through it when she gasped. Her heart seemed to
stop in her chest, her knees grew weak, her mind went blank of anything
other than the man standing in the doorway.
It was Jamie. He had come.
Hands on hips, he stood there, staring. The breadth of his shoulders
filled the doorway. He seemed to tower over her and Chavez, and indeed,
the entire room. He stared at Tess and at Chavez, swiftly summing up the
situation.
He was alive! He had come for her. She had not allowed herself to
believe he could be dead, but still he was a dream standing before her,
the hero come to sweep her away. She was so stunned to see him she could
not move, she could not utter a word, she couldn't even cry out her
thrill at seeing him standing there alive, warm blood pulling in his
veins, his chest rising and falling with every breath he took. She saw
nothing but Jamie.
Chavez had not seemed to notice Jamie was there. Chavez was staring at
Tess, and there was pure, cold murder in his coal-black eyes.
"Tess!" Jamie hissed to her.
"Move!"
She found motion at last as Chavez charged after her. She pitched
herself toward Jamie. He caught her shoulders, and his smoke-gray eyes
stared sternly into hers. "Go!" he commanded her.
"Go, get out of here, run! Do you hear me? Get the hell out and run!"
Then he thrust her behind him and out the door, into the darkness of the
night. Tess heard the sound of the impact as Chavez came thundering
against Jamie.
She couldn't run. She paused and turned back. Chavez had pulled his
knife.
The steel glistened in the pale moonglow of the night.
"Jamie!" she cried.
But Jamie had seen the knife. She expected him to draw his Colt, but
when he didn't she realized he couldn't draw down the entire camp upon
them with the sounds of bullets.
He, too, drew a knife.
"Go!" he thundered to Tess.
Still she hesitated, tears forming on her eyes. "Jamie" -- "Go! I'll
deal with you later?"
His furious, high-handed tone finally sent her into motion. She had been
kidnapped and abused, and now he was yelling at her.
Yelling at her. and facing Chavez with a knife. She bit her lip, then
turned and ran. The trail stretched~ out in the darkness before her,
narrow, twisting, rising higher and higher into the mountains. Gasping
for breath, half choking, half sobbing, Tess continued to run. She
stumbled into a huge rock, glowing white in the moonlight.
She caught hold of it, wincing against the pain in her feet, inhaling
deeply and desperately. Then she started to run again, almost blind as
the shrub grew thicker and rose higher, adding to the darkness of the
night.
Staggering, she kept on running. She grabbed at shrubs, still running,
heedless of discomfort or pain.
Then, in the darkness, she slammed against something with such impetus
that she fell to the ground, barely catching herself to break the fall,
scraping her palms with the rock and dirt beneath her hands. Stunned,
she tossed the hair from her eyes and looked up, trying to discern what
had happened.
She gasped yet made no noise, and her heart began to thunder with
renewed terror.
He stood before her, naked except for a breech clout his arms crossed
over his chest. He was as tall as Jamie, as broad, and very, very dark.
His hair was ebony and it streamed straight down his back. He was nearly
copper in color, and his features were very strong and hard.
He reached down, grasped her wrists and drew her to her feet.
Instinctively she tried to pull away from him. His grip upon her
tightened.
He smiled very slowly, and though she struggled, he held her tightly.
"Let me go," Tess said.
"Jamie--er, Lieutenant Slater is right behind me, and he'll shoot you."
She was losing her mind. She was trying to explain things in English to
an Apache savage.
"So you are the blond woman who costs so dearly," he responded in
perfect English.
"You have escaped the Comancheros. You will not escape me."
She shook her head wildly.
"No! You do not understand me! Let me go.
I've a friend. He's fight behind me. He's killing that Comanchero and
he's going to kill you. He"--" Shut up, Sun-Colored Woman."
"My name is Tess. Or Miss. Stuart. It's" -- "Sun-Colored Woman. That is
to be your name. I am Nalte, and it will be so."
"Nalte!" she breathed. She had escaped the Comanchere to run into the
arms of the very Apache who had ordered her as if she was dry goods for
a mercantile store! "You--you speak English," she said.
"Yes. Now you will come."
"No! Please, listen" -- He wasn't going to listen. He grasped her wrists
and drew her over his shoulders. She slammed her fists furiously against
him.
"Let me go, you savage! Let me go fight now! You can't just buy a blond
woman! Please ..."
But he wasn't listening to her. He was moving flcetly up the hail. He
didn't seem to be running, but the trail was disappearing beneath his
feet, and they were moving higher and higher into the mountains. He was
ignoring her pleas.
"Bastard!" she cried in furious panic.
"Savage! Horrid, horrid savage!"
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 w~nt 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 whi~ 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 fierc~
battle, and Mar~gas Coloradas was seized from his horse. He was taken to