She closed her eyes tighter and prayed fervently for Sister Ruth’s soul; she did not pray for her death. Even though she knew of the things that the Apache did to women captives, her faith would not allow her to pray for death. But she could pray for Sister Ruth to have the strength and the peace of the abiding Almighty, and she did. Then she prayed over and over again for Ruth’s precious soul. When she was done, she felt weak and alone. She asked the Saviour to comfort Sister Ruth in her hour of need, and she began to talk quietly to her, the way she had once talked at night in her heart to her own father when she was a novice in the convent. She had been deeply troubled then as well.
She felt a gentle warmth inside at the thought of her father. Sister Ruth and he were similar in so many ways. They were both possessed of great pride; not evil pride as some have, but rather a sense of rightness in their actions and being. Stubborn, too. Sister St Agnes smiled at the thought and her mind drifted effortlessly to her father, now dead, whom she loved so much. A Baptist minister, he had never spoken to her after she had become a Catholic and entered the convent.
She was silent for a few moments, and then in a soft, mothering tone she said, ‘Sister Ruth, forget where you are now, forget everything, let go of this world. Let Jesus hold you and comfort you. He’s coming for you, Ruth, turn away and run to Him.’ She was sobbing softly now, not in sorrow, not in joy, simply in farewell. She was smiling through her tears.
After she had composed herself, Sister St Agnes began her second prayer. She appeared to straighten her small body somewhat and she squeezed the crucifix tightly between the palms of her hands. ‘Jesus,’ she whispered, her voice intensifying, ‘I have never asked for a miracle. I have never deserved one. I’ve never asked for a thing for myself, though You Yourself, Lord, said: “Ask and it shall be given.” I am willing to die in this place if that is Your will … but …’ Her words failed her. She clutched harder at the cross in her hands, and for the first time in her life, she felt herself sweating beneath her habit. She shuddered as if a hand had touched her, and the desert night felt oddly cold and penetrating. ‘Dear Saviour Jesus, send one who will deliver the others from this evil.’
Sister St Agnes slept.
Nat Swanson sat bolt upright in his sleep, and yelled. The dog came close to him and stared into his face. He reached a trembling hand out toward it and it growled at him and moved away. Swanson was drenched with sweat and he stood up, shaken. He had never yelled like that before in his life and he didn’t like it. He sat down on a rock and tried to piece together what had caused it. He looked at his hands; they were still trembling. It was a beautiful, starry night. The dog came and sat down a distance away and watched him, curious. The moon was three-quarters full and seemed to move among brilliant white clouds.
Swanson knew he had been dreaming. That in itself was strange, since he could not recall having ever dreamed before. But he was certain that he had been dreaming. About what, he didn’t know. Except that he knew it had something to do with the woman at the wagons. He had seen her face again – a face surrounded by utter darkness – and he had yelled a yell that felt like it had been trapped inside of him all his days. Swanson shook slightly. He called the dog but the animal only stared at him, its fur up on its back.
Three hours before dawn, Nat Swanson cinched the mule up tight and started on again. He rode chewing on a piece of jerky; he tried to stay alert to the trail and the surrounding hills, but his mind kept drifting back to the wagons and the woman. An hour later, he stopped and sat thinking. He felt oddly chilled. The dog was watching him closely, giving him a wide berth.
He rubbed his eyes; he couldn’t shake the memory of her face. She didn’t look like anyone he had ever known. She wasn’t handsome. She wasn’t marrying age. He could no longer remember what his own mother looked like, so she couldn’t remind him of her. It didn’t make sense. There was a new life waiting for him in California. But now, strangely, it was on the periphery of his thoughts. Try as he would, he couldn’t get his mind off the face at the wagons. He just sat there, the mule grazing, the dog watching him.
When dawn came and he was still sitting there, still thinking about her, he turned the mule around and started back to the canyon.
He stood glassing the arroyos and ridgebacks, looking for a way he could reach the wagons. There was none that wouldn’t get him killed, unless he waited until dark, and by that time, he figured, it would be too late. The Apaches were growing bolder. Nine of them were standing on the road, some behind the rocks, some in plain view of the wagons.
Two young bucks who walked like they had been drinking mescal marched boldly out in front of the wagons, turned and pulled their breechcloths up and then, tauntingly, slapped their buttocks. The Hawken rifle barked again; and, startled, the two darted unceremoniously for cover down the rocky slope, their comrades laughing at them. Swanson shook his head, amazed anyone could miss with a rifle at that distance.
Minutes later, the Apaches were tossing fist-sized rocks over the wagons and yelling taunts. Twice on the wind, he heard their word for whore. This wasn’t going to last much longer; soon a brave would get high enough on peyote or mescal, grab a lance and rush the wagons, others would follow, and it would be over.
Unpleasant as it was to think of the woman dying in this way, it gave him an odd idea, one that just might work. As quickly as caution would allow, he mounted and rode the mule into the shadows of a scrub oak that stood alongside the main ridge trail overlooking the canyon. He held the cocked crossbow in his hands as he searched for the two Indians who had been slapping their buttocks at the wagons. He singled them out because they were the most brazen of the band, most eager to be at the victims behind the wagons.
They were standing behind the boulders on the road now, dancing rhythmically in place, moving their arms in strange gyrations, wildly intoxicated and dangerous. Swanson picked the closest. He guessed the distance at over six hundred feet, very close to the crossbow’s maximum range. The quarrel head would not hit with enough impact to kill, so he slipped a bodkin, stiletto-like, long and slender, razor-honed steel that could sever a spinal cord or cut through four or five inches of muscle and bone, into the firing groove. It was a chance shot and it might give him away, but he needed time.
Swanson aimed a good half inch above the head of the Indian, hoping to catch him through a lung, but the shot was low, taking the brave in the stomach. The man began to flip and writhe on the ground. He would die, but it would be a long, painful death. Swanson took no pleasure in the thought. He kicked the mule into a trot.
Sun, ants and flies had been at the Mexican’s head for three days and it no longer looked human. The fetid stench of both the man and the woman made him sick. The dog would not come close, but the mule was not bothered. To keep from vomiting, Swanson tossed loose dirt on the dead man’s head until it was almost covered; then he tied the dead woman to a travois lashed to the saddle and headed at a trot for the canyon.
It took him half an hour to rope the corpse on to the mule. When he finished, he tied a blanket, cape-like, around the dead woman’s neck and down her back to hide the two sticks of manzanita he had used to prop her upright. She looked grotesque, stiff and bloated, yet oddly militant and alive in her death pose. The effect was exactly what Swanson was aiming for. Strangely, for so warlike a people, the Apaches had a horror of death, and an equal horror of evil spirits. And in death this naked woman, with one breast cut off, the other savagely shredded, her abdomen split from breastbone to where her pubic area had once been, her eyes burned-out holes, looked frighteningly evil.
Once started, the mule would follow the trail to the bottom. Swanson slapped the animal hard on the rump and quickly, shouldering a heavy deerskin pack, moved out in an awkward, limping dogtrot. The pain in his leg was worse, and the wound had begun to bleed again. He stopped midway down the mountain and looked for the mule. It was moving in a careful gait, the dead woman rocking awkwardly on its back, what was left of her red hair blowing in a light breeze.
Swanson crouched in the chaparral until he heard the first frightened yell. The mule was standing at the foot of the slope with the woman still on its back, and panic-stricken Apaches were running away in fear.