Paint the Wind

  "Only if they lose their confidence, Fancy. And your constant pecking at me is killing mine."

  Fancy bit back what she'd planned to say for she heard the truth in his words. No one worked a circus, or performed on any stage, without knowing that without confidence you were dead.

  "Why can't you just love me like you used to, Fancy? I swear, when we had less, you loved me more. Don't you see how hard I'm working for you and the kids?"

  "I don't think you do what you do for us, Chance. I think you'd be doing the exact same thing for your own ego, if we didn't exist."

  "That's great, Fancy, just great. You have the most unerring instinct for punching holes in my balloon. I swear you're like a squaw with a Jesuit, you always know just where to set the barb, don't you? And what makes you so goddamned righteous? Can't you see I'm doing the best I can, the only way I can?"

  "And can't you see there isn't any room in your world for me anymore, Chance? You've successfully managed to turn me into a housefrau and mother and I'm beginning to think that's the last thing on earth you really want to be married to. Where the hell do I fit into your life now? You don't share anything with me anymore, you share it all with the masses. With all those hangers-on and sycophants who follow you on the circuit. With pols and gambling buddies and dinner guests and party people and all the minions who keep you from ever having to be alone with yourself or me. I need you, don't you need me anymore?"

  Chance never answered, just left the room angry and hurt, but she knew some part of the soliloquy had hit home.

  She was right that he wouldn't let her in close anymore, he thought morosely as he made his way up the street. But to let her in, he'd have to be honest about all that was going wrong and he didn't know how to do that... didn't know how to be a graceful failure. No. He'd just have to try to recoup and then make things right with Fancy. He didn't know how to do it any other way.

  Chance went over the ledgers yet again, as if reading them through could change the facts. It wasn't something he liked to do. He'd made a habit of never looking at bills over the years, or any of the drearier paperwork of life; when you're on top of the world, creditors seldom make nuisances of themselves.

  For the most part he left the books to his managers and accountants, or to Jason or John; they were the experts, after all. Even when two of Leadville's banks had closed in '84, amid a flurry of scandals and arrests, Chance had paid relatively little attention to their demise. There'd been some serious losses for him when the banks defaulted, but Jason Madigan had been gentleman enough to help him out with a series of loans, until he could get back on an even keel. Just as he'd done right after the mining cave-in.

  Chance shook his head at the strange exigencies of fate—all those years ago he'd felt nothing but anger and resentment over Fancy's relationship with the man, and yet now Jason had grown to be his major ally. The man had been a real gentleman to swallow the animosity he must have felt at losing Fancy, and to risk his life in the rescue as he had. A gentleman and a friend.

  Chance closed the last ledger; the money he needed simply wasn't there—his assets weren't liquid enough to cover both the gambling debts and the bills. The gilded invitations to masked balls at the mansion, the trips and trappings for him and Fancy, the children and entourage of servants, the astronomical clothing and jewelry bills—why, Fancy's bill at Tiffany's in New York alone would have kept a small country solvent. And then, of course, there were his escalating gambling debts. He'd let himself grow reckless, as the pressures of life kept mounting, and for some unfathomable reason, his fabled good fortune persisted in its inconsistency. He'd have to keep a lower profile in certain areas, for a while, until this cash-flow problem eased—and he'd have to find a way to cut expenses.

  God, how he missed Hart's counsel and his good-natured acceptance; it worried him that his brother had been gone so long. He brushed aside the idea of telling Fancy; she'd only worry and carp... and say she'd told him so. It might be best to wire Jason and arrange a chat with him, the next time he came to Colorado. Madigan had a seemingly endless supply of money and would understand a temporary cash-flow problem, as Fancy would not. As soon as a few of the investments he'd made in other countries began to pay off, there'd be a surplus of cash again.

  Chance returned the ledger to the safe, switched off the desk lamp, and left the mine manager's office exactly as he'd found it. As he looked around the office he thought again of Hart, with a visceral sense of loss and loneliness. Hurt as Chance had been when his brother had taken his money out of the mine operation years ago, now he was glad; whatever turns his own fortune might take, at least Hart's money was protected... it was a fact in which he took great consolation. He really missed the big ox. He only hoped Hart was all right wherever he was; it had been a year since there'd been any word. There'd been a cryptic telegram once a year since his departure into Indian territory, just enough to say he was still out there. He was alive somewhere, of that Chance was absolutely certain... if his brother was in serious trouble, or dead, the sixth sense that bound them would have told him so. The odds were, Hart was somewhere in Apacheria doing just what he'd always wanted to do. How like him to assume the Apaches would let him in, without relieving him of his fine red hair in the bargain.

  Chance looked around the familiar office one last time, said a silent prayer for Hart's safety... and then another that he wouldn't stay away much longer.

  Chapter 96

  The flight into Mexico was grueling for an emaciated people long separated from their hunting grounds, but the mood of the refugees who fled San Carlos was exuberant with the heady thought of freedom. As the desert flatlands gave way to rolling foothills and finally to lush mountain ranges near the border, the People said among themselves that they'd come home. Even if it was only to die there, it would be better to be buried with the graves of their ancestors than to live in the white man's prison house of the spirit.

  A short time after crossing to Mexico, the band made camp, and Gokhlaya came to Hart to speak of what would come. He entered the tipi of the white man who had come to be his friend, and listened for a moment to Destarte singing to her child. She had a sweet contralto voice; it always seemed to Hart like a benediction when the band made camp and Destarte sang.

  "To the People," Gokhlaya said, moved by the melody, "song is the breath of the Spirit that consecrates the rest of life."

  "We sing in our churches," Hart answered.

  Gokhlaya smiled a little. "The white man goes to his church and he talks about God," he said. "The People go to the land and we talk to God."

  Hart chuckled. "You are right, my friend. The Apache is far closer to the spirit world than is the white man."

  Gokhlaya nodded; he looked old and wearied. "My people are few now," he said sadly. "There was a time when they covered the earth like the desert sands. Now that is but a memory. It has been given to me to know that we will soon wander far from the graves of our ancestors, my friend. I wonder, do the white-eyes think that once we have been killed they will own this land? No one can own the land, Firehair, they can but tenant it. And the white-eyes will share this stolen place with the ghosts of our dead."

  "You are melancholy tonight, my friend," Hart said, wondering why Gokhlaya had come. The problems of war and flight lay heavy on the man, and Hart knew the Indian saw the handwriting on the wall as clearly as he did.

  The Apache turned his powerful gaze to Hart's. "I have come for a purpose. I wish us to be brothers."

  "Are we not already brothers, Gokhlaya?" Hart asked, and as he said the word, the thought of his own lost brother, whom he missed so sorely, was an ache inside him.

  "You speak our tongue as one of us... your son is an Apache. But in your blood you are white, my friend. In a man's blood is his whole being—I would share with you my blood, for in it is what I think and feel, as it came to me from my father and from his father before him."

  Deeply moved by the honor Gokhlaya did him, Hart sensed Gokhlaya wishe
d him to do more than witness, he wanted him to carry some part of the Apache Nation back to the white man's world within him. The old warrior was too wise not to know that Hart must return to his own... drops from the red river in the torrent of the white, Hart thought solemnly before he spoke again.

  "How can this be done?"

  "The medicine man must make it so."

  "It would be the greatest honor, my friend," Hart said, meaning it with all his being. Gokhlaya nodded and left the tipi to its occupants.

  Hart was already in bed when Destarte knelt beside him and brushed the long, straight ends of her waist-length hair across his chest. He saw that she was naked and he touched her body lovingly, wondering what it was she wanted to say or do.

  "I wish to have another child, my husband," she said simply, answering the unspoken question. "It is time." Hart frowned.

  He'd struggled with the constraints laid on their lovemaking by the Apache need to let three summers pass between children, but much as he wanted his wife, he thought there couldn't be a worse moment to conceive. Perhaps his reticence had made Destarte feel unloved, or unwanted...

  He brushed back the long strands so he could see her face clearly. "I have never loved you more. But these are perilous times, my Misty One... to have a baby now could endanger you, while we are on the run from the soldiers, so I have held back. But it has not been because I don't desire you, my beloved— only because I fear for your safety.

  "Soon the time is coming, my Destarte, when I must leave

  Apacheria and" take you and Charles to my world—should we not wait until a safer moment to bring another child into this precarious life?"

  "It is in my heart that there may not ever be a place for us in your world, my husband, even though you struggle to make one for us. I crave another child of our love, to grow beneath my heart. There is great fear in me that we may be separated by some terrible chance, and if that happens, I must have part of you to keep...."

  Hart sat up in the bed and pulled Destarte to a place beside him; he didn't want her to finish the frightening sentence. He took the blanket and wrapped it around both their bodies and took his wife into the shelter of his arms.

  "You must know that nothing on earth could make me leave you and Charles...."

  "Some things are beyond even your power to change, my husband. You would not leave us willingly, yet it has come to me that we will be separated." He could see that nothing he said would dissuade her from her conviction.

  "You must talk with Gokhlaya, Destarte. He is very wise and his Power will tell him to reassure you that I will never abandon you."

  Destarte pushed back the blanket and raised her head so she could look into her husband's eyes.

  "I have already spoken with Gokhlaya, my husband who is the Witness. He has told me to tell you to honor my need to carry your child within me."

  A terrible sense of destiny crashed in upon Hart; he felt as if the earth had shifted with her words.

  He pressed her back upon the bed and pushing away the encumbering coverlet, he took her body in his hands with all the recklessness denied them for so long. Far into the night he made love to her and she to him. She was wanton, as he'd never seen her, and every taste was sharpened, every sense alerted, every nerve ending electric... she was neither sane nor crazy, she was many women, only some of whom he knew, she was everything he needed, loved, desired, and he was the same for her. Again and again and again... until somewhere near morning, husband and wife, lovers, comrades, fellow wayfarers on the pathways of a world beyond their power to control, fell asleep entwined together. Each with the certain knowledge that a new life would spring from the seed of their love, and that whatever the gods had in store for them, they had wrested this one precious night from them, and it would live in memory forever.

  Three nights after Gokhlaya's visit, Hart, having fasted from sunrise, was led to the ceremonial circle of men by two elders of the tribe. Gokhlaya was considered a medicine man of surpassing power, and Hart could see that the shaman who would perform the ritual conferred with him. A bone-handled hunting knife had been thrust among the white-hot coals of the fire; Hart wondered what its use would be, thinking with a certain rueful amusement that he'd been an Apache long enough to know there was no place for the faint of heart in the People's ceremonies.

  Solemn figures sat in ritual circle around the fire, and the flames shadow-danced on their unsmiling faces. The strength and dignity of the assemblage reminded Hart that the leaders paid honor to him and to Gokhlaya by their participation in this sacred moment. There was a turquoise-studded bowl on the ground in front of the shaman's feet as he stood in prayer.

  "In a man's blood is his life-force and his honor," Gokhlaya announced to the assemblage in a resounding voice. "The essence of the man, the thoughts of his brain, the feelings of his heart, the secrets of his spirit, reside forever in the blood that flows through him." The men around the fire began a slow, even chanting to the rhythm of the drumbeat that sounded on the still night air.

  The medicine man came forward and grasped both Hart and Gokhlaya by the wrists, in a grip that was strong and unyielding. He pulled the ceremonial knife from the fire and saluted the four directions reverently with it, offering incantations as he did so. He plunged the knife into the ground with great force and called upon the Earth Mother to empower it for their purpose. Then, without hesitation, he slashed the flesh of Gokhlaya's arm and the flesh of Firehair's; holding the men's hands high above their heads, he let their combined blood run unhindered into the silver bowl, and bound their wounds together with leather thongs. The muscles of the two strong arms glowed taut in the firelight, locked in friendship as stalwart as the men it bound. Then he bade the two drink the blood commingled in the silver vessel, and each did so with awe and reverence. Gokhlaya's eyes locked with those of his white brother and Hart thought he saw in them the history of the People and the courage of all brave men, in all time. We are strong men, you and I, the eyes said. Whichever of us survives will do so for us both.

  "The blood is the man, the two are as one, the bond is forever," the medicine man intoned, releasing the knot that bound the two men together. He bowed ceremonially to each.

  "You are my brother now," Gokhlaya said to Hart as the ritual ended. The two men embraced in the manner of warriors and Hart understood at that moment of communion that Gokhlaya knew the end was near for the People, and wished Hart not to part from him without sure knowledge of their brotherhood.

  "... Greed and avarice on the part of the whites is at the bottom of nine-tenths of all our Indian troubles," Crook said, but his words fell on rapacious ears. He'd been recalled again to the troubled Indian territory for the avowed purpose of once and for all subduing the renegade Apaches. He was a soldier and had no choice but to pursue Gokhlaya and Naiche's band into the Southern Stronghold; to do so, troops poured forth from Camp Apache, Fort Bowie, and Fort Grant, to begin a deadly game of hide-and-seek.

  Hart no longer needed to brood over what role he was to play in war. He was not a warrior by nature, but most men can find ferocity inside themselves when they must defend wife, children, and comrades; he told Gokhlaya that this time he would fight in the effort to establish the tribe safely in the Southern Stronghold, but that after that task had been accomplished, he would take Destarte and their children and return with them to the white man's world. Gokhlaya nodded and said that his Power had already made clear what the path of Firehair the Witness was to be, and that he accepted its wisdom.

  Hart saw things in that terrible campaign of '85 and '86 that he wished could be torn from his memory. The Apaches had a reputation as the fiercest of torturers, but Hart had seen none of this practice in the years he'd spent with them. In this fearful war there was no quarter given on either side. He saw captured men bound and buried up to the neck in sand, with syrup poured on their heads so the soldier ants would eat the flesh from their living bones. He saw men tied upside down on wagon wheels, with a fire lit under
their heads to roast their brains until their skulls burst.

  He saw prisoners with thongs of wet rawhide fastened around their heads set out in the sun, so as the rawhide dried and tightened, their brains exploded from their caved-in skulls. And, too, Hart saw Apache men, women, and children who were dear to him tortured, maimed, or killed by Mexican and American soldiers.

  After a time there was no right or wrong any longer, no justice or mercy, only war and madness. His mind became' obsessed with man's inhumanity to man and the devastation of the innocent ones, the women and children who were brutalized in the wake of men's wars. He recorded it all in infinite painstaking detail, by the campfire when they stopped to rest each night, never sleeping until everything he'd seen was drawn on paper, as if only by bearing witness could he justify his own continuing existence.

  The Chiracahua had pursued and been pursued through '85 and well into '86. They'd headed for the Sierra Madre stronghold, which had protected the People time out of mind, only to find these fortresses were no longer sacrosanct, for Crook had employed disgruntled Apaches as scouts, as well as an Indian tracker named Tom Horn, who'd once been Geronimo's friend. These men knew the trails and waterholes, the camps and sanctuaries, as well as Gokhlaya's people did, and it soon became apparent that the canyons of Sonora would become the last grueling battleground of the Apache nation.

  Chapter 97

  Hart took his son's hand in his own and squeezed it affectionately; he was pleased by the strength of the responsive grip. Charles Paint-the-Wind was nearly a head taller than his playfellows, broad in the shoulder and powerfully built. He was also serious beyond his years, and Hart wondered if the boy's half-breed status made him the butt of ridicule among the other children or if this reserve was simply the child's nature. He'd seen no evidence of prejudice and attributed this both to the size and strength that were his son's legacy from the Charles McAllister he'd been named for, and to the Apaches' intense love of children that made each child a ward of every family in the tribe. Surely, no Apache parent would allow the boy to be mocked by his companions simply because of his dual heritage; respect for the dignity of the individual was inherent in the tribe's code. Later, respect as an individual of strength or wisdom or daring or spirituality must be earned in its own time.