The Pride of Hannah Wade (32 page)

T
HE PEACH COLOR OF
H
ANNAH’S GOWN FLATTERED THE
bronze tan of her skin and the red tones in her hair as she sat in the soft glow of the lamplight, the center of everyone’s attention, including Cutter’s. He stood well back, supporting an adobe wall as he had for much of the evening and nursing a glass of champagne, while he watched the party’s guest of honor. He’d seen the article in the newspaper the day before. Cutter hadn’t read past the headline, “White Woman, Becomes Squaw in Heathen Ceremony,” before he’d thrown the paper away.

Hannah’s head was held high all evening, rarely bowing to any look or comment, and her dark eyes were direct and faintly challenging. Her lips were softly composed, a slightly willful, slightly fatalistic set to them. Cutter had the distinct feeling that Hannah Wade was stronger than anything that had happened to her. She had learned to bend, and not break.

“Tell me, Mrs. Wade, did you meet any of the Apache chiefs? Geronimo, Vittorio . . .” The questions put to her were as endless as the expressions of sympathy. This time, it was Colonel Bettendorf who was getting into the discussion.

“Juh came to the
rancheria
several times. Twice to visit, I guess, and the other times when the warriors were going out on raids. They—the Apache woman called Little Cat who was my mistress—referred to Juh as a
hesh-ke,
which means a ‘crazy,’ an unreasonable hater.”

“What of the others?” the colonel persisted.

“Geronimo came to the camp once, but I didn’t know it was him,” Hannah admitted. “I only learned he had been there after he’d gone. They regard him as a
di-yin,
a kind of medicine chief. He has the power, they say, to see the outcome of a battle before it occurs.”

“You surely don’t believe that,” Captain Goodson scoffed.

“So far, the Apaches say, he hasn’t been wrong.” She shrugged, unconcerned about whether they believed her or not. “Many people claim that the Irish have second sight.”

“That’s true enough,” Lieutenant Hennessy agreed. “My mother had a dream that Lincoln would be shot just a week before he was assassinated.”

“Do you know, this is fascinating,” the colonel declared, sitting back on the horsehair sofa. “She is actually giving us an intelligence report on the enemy. We need to get her up to headquarters and have her go over the maps, give us an idea of their travel routes, where they go, when. Valuable information, important and valuable information.”

“Not tonight, Colonel,” his wife interjected. “This party is celebrating Mrs. Wade’s return. She is to relax and enjoy herself. Isn’t that right, my dear?” She reached over to pat Hannah’s arm affectionately.

“Yes.” Hannah’s lips formed a smile, but Cutter observed the tension that was behind it.

“I understand that Apaches are abusive to their wives. Is that true, Mrs. Wade?” Lieutenant Digby’s young wife leaned forward with avid curiosity.

“I don’t know how they treat their wives. I was a slave.” Smoothly she turned to look elsewhere.

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t be surprised.” Maude Goodson responded to the inquiry with her own opinion. “The Apaches are a brutal race. I shall never forget how on our journey here to Fort Bayard we came across a burnt-out wagon train. The Apaches had attacked only hours before, and there wasn’t a single survivor, which was horrible enough. But worse, they had mutilated the bodies almost beyond recognition. It was barbaric.”

“It’s fortunate that you didn’t see what the Mexican army did when they attacked the
rancheria
below the border,” Hannah remarked calmly, a sparking of temper in her eyes. “I saw them split babies open with their sabers and tie ropes to children’s legs, then ride in separate directions—“

“Hannah.” Stephen Wade stood behind her chair, pressing a hand upon her shoulder.

“Forgive me, ladies,” Hannah apologized to her horrified counterparts. “I was trying to make the point that cruelty and barbarism are not limited to the Apaches.”

“Gracious me, I don’t understand how you could go through any of this.” Mrs. Digby pressed a delicate lace kerchief to her nose as if needing its heavy gardenia scent to revive her. “Why, I would have killed myself before I let them lay a hand on me.”

A small stirring in the room seemed to indicate that this opinion was shared by the majority of those present. Hannah’s reaction was a tightening of the lips;
a strong light shone in her eyes as she faced this silent condemnation.

“You’ll find that the will to survive is very strong, Mrs. Digby,” she informed her with a forced pleasantness. “No pain is so great that you can’t endure it. Many times you may
think
you want to die, but when the choice is offered, you’ll want to live.” Her quick upward glance in Wade’s direction gave the distinct impression that the subject had been previously discussed.

“Still, Mrs. Digby does raise a good point,” Colonel Bettendorf remarked, nodding thoughtfully. “Women of refinement and breeding should not be subjected to certain horrors at the hands of the hostiles. It is our duty to protect them. It is ultimately our responsibility to see that they aren’t taken alive. The last bullets in the chamber must always be saved for the women and children in our midst. Why, at Fort Phil Kearney, they have a standing order that if the post is overrun, the women and children are to be put in the powder magazine and an explosive charge set off.”

It was a favorite and much-used illustration of the colonel’s on the topic of protecting the “innocents,” the category into which women and children fell in the army’s classifications. Once Hannah would have laughed and teased the colonel that perhaps wives had more to fear from their husbands than from the Indians. She no longer found any humor in the topic.

“I have often wondered who gave that order,” Hannah ventured with idle curiosity. “It’s so dramatic —it sounds like something the reckless and dashing General Custer would do. Did the furor he caused in Washington with his charges of corruption in the Indian Bureau ever die down?”

A telling silence spread through the room before the colonel responded, “No one has told you about Custer?”

“No.” Hannah looked around the room at the sober, knowing expressions.

“A third of the Seventh Regiment was wiped out.” Lieutenant Digby volunteered the information. “There was a battle up in Montana along a river they call the Little Big Horn. Custer is dead, along with nearly two hundred of his men. It happened last June. No one survived.”

“Except for Major Reno and the three companies Custer put under his command.” It was Stephen who spoke, the hardness of condemnation in his voice. “Custer would be alive if Reno had attacked the Indian encampment as he was ordered to and created a diversion. Instead, he tried to make a stand and it turned into a rout. Custer was battling the Indians not three miles distant. Reno should have charged through and come to Custer’s aid.”

“Reno’s companies were under attack,” the colonel reminded him. “They were defending themselves. It would have been extremely difficult to mount an offensive under those circumstances. And even if Reno had joined up with Custer, the Indians still had a superior force in the field. The whole regiment could have been wiped out.”

“Captain Weir took a company without authority and went to Custer’s aid, because Reno wouldn’t do it. By then, it was too late. But Weir did try—he did move.”

The entire battle obviously had been hashed over many times, the strategy, terrain, and conditions discussed again and again. Hannah could hear the bitterness in Stephen’s voice, and knew precisely what he was thinking: if he’d been there in Reno’s stead, he would have reached Custer—he would have saved Custer. The glory would have been his.

Murmuring an excuse, Hannah rose from her chair, leaving the men to refight the battle without her. As she
crossed to the side table where a moderately cooled bottle of champagne rested in a bucket of snow water, she reflected on how different things might have been if Stephen had accepted that captaincy in the Seventh after the Civil War. All the battles and the focus of national attention were in the Plains. He might have had his glory, might have realized his ambitions and achieved military acclaim with the Seventh Cavalry Regiment, instead of being forgotten here in this sun-baked, canyon-scarred land, frustrated and restless. And she—she would never have been taken by the Apaches. Of course, it was also entirely possible that if Stephen had joined the Seventh, she might have been a widow by now.

“May I?” A large-knuckled hand lifted the champagne bottle from its bucket, a linen towel ready to hold under the dripping sides.

Hannah looked up, a sense of ease touching her when she met the glance of Jake Cutter’s steady blue eyes. “Thank you, Captain.” She held out her glass and idly studied his deeply tanned features. There was a deliberateness about him that indicated that he was slow to judge, and an indolence that masked the swiftness of his mind and the sharp attention of his gaze. Hannah remembered that when his eyes lifted to her again. Behind them, the talk rose as a detail of Custer’s last battle was disputed. “The wall is standing without your support, Captain,” she remarked idly. Ever since the dinner party had retired to the parlor, she had noticed, Jake Cutter had leaned against one wall as if he were a permanent brace. “Or were you assigned to that post by Mrs. Goodson?” She sipped at the champagne, which had gone as flat as the evening, as flat as her attempts to engage in the social patter at which she had once been so adept.

“A bachelor learns to stay close to the refreshment
table.” Cutter countered with an equally empty and meaningless remark.

Four days she had been back. Four days she’d tried to live as she had previously lived, and discovered that very little filled her days. They were empty, the time taken by afternoon teas or literary meetings or preparing for afternoon teas and literary meetings, and supervising the household help. Somehow she had lost the sense that these things were important.

She sipped at the champagne, her back to the room as she faced the side table, and listened to the arguments, the second-guessing. Bettendorf’s voice lifted. “Never forget, the Sioux and the Cheyenne are among the best light cavalry the world has ever known.”

“Cavalry,” Hannah said, and felt Cutter’s attention come fully to her. “The war with the Sioux and the Cheyenne and the other northern tribes is a cavalry officers’ war. That isn’t the way of the Apache. I’m afraid my husband is in the wrong region. He wants the action and the swiftness of a cavalry war.”

Cutter lifted a shoulder in an idle shrug. “People want too much.”

Hannah looked at him with some surprise. “I’ve often thought that.”

“It’s true. Sometimes it’s enough that life is good—that the air is fresh and the sun rides high.” He stood at right angles to her, his look steady. She listened to his words and felt the stirring of interest.

For an instant, she blocked out the others in the room, forgot their existence, until a whispered exchange caught her attention. People didn’t speak in whispers unless they didn’t want their remarks overheard. In the last four days, there had been far too many whispers and behind-the-hand murmurs in her presence.

Without turning, she asked, “Are they all watching me, Captain?”

His pause was slight. “Yes.”

“Pity,” she said shortly. “I would have liked to see the back of someone’s head this evening. Their eyes are on me all the time.” A faint bitterness came into her voice. “I know what they’re wondering—it’s the only question they haven’t had the nerve to ask. How many has she had?”

In the following silence, Cutter set his nearly empty champagne glass on the side table, then turned away. It startled Hannah that he should leave so abruptly—but he didn’t leave. Her glance rose from his wide shoulders to the long, shaggy hair curling into the collar of his dress uniform.
“The back of someone’s
head”—the
phrase came back to her as Cutter swung around to face her again, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a smile. She tried to suppress her laugh, but some of it bubbled through, and the awful tension that had been stretching her nerves suddenly eased.

“You should smile more often,” he said, and picked up his glass. “It makes everything easier.”

She sobered, growing thoughtful, but her expression remained warm. “I don’t know that I ever properly thanked you, for—everything.” His presence had been so steadying during those days of going from being an Apache captive to a free woman.

“Thanks aren’t necessary, Mrs. Wade,” Cutter insisted with a withdrawn air. “I did no more than anyone else in my position would have done.”

“You were doing your duty.” Hannah recalled the phrase she so identified with the military.

Cutter studied the pale liquid in the bottom of his glass. “Yes, my duty.” He raised his glass, downing the last of his flat champagne.

The sound of a footstep behind her broke into the accord between them. Then Stephen was at her elbow, his head inclining solicitously toward her. “How are you feeling, Hannah?”

At last she turned, bringing more of the room and its occupants into her range of vision as she faced Stephen. She felt everyone’s attention on them, surreptitiously watching and speculating.

“I’m fine.” The smoothness of her answer belied the returning tension she felt, but it was there, traveling along her nerves.

His critical glance took note of the full glass of wine in her hand. “More champagne?” He arched an eyebrow in a gesture of disapproval.

“It’s only my second glass.” Hannah heard the defensive note in her voice, and resented it. “Don’t worry, Stephen. It’s not likely to loosen my tongue.” Her stiff, low answer referred to his previous admonitions that she not discuss her fate in the Apaches’ hands. She knew how worried he was that she would reveal certain details to his friends and fellow officers, confirm all the things they so strongly, and often accurately, suspected.

His mouth tightened in displeasure as he glanced briefly at Cutter, whom he’d previously ignored. To Hannah, Stephen said, “I thought perhaps you were getting tired. It might be best if we have an early evening.”