The Copper City - Chris Scott Wilson [18]
But there had been other thoughts too. Since they had left the settlement, he had tried to close his mind to her, and thus relieve himself of the burden of her welfare. Something, he understood now, like looking the other way and hoping everything would disappear. And it had worked too, up to a point. He had forced himself to stop looking at her as a woman, merely as another member of the party. But now, the attack yesterday had opened up that corner of his mind, as if the two men’s advances had in some way proved how desirable she was. The act, no matter how drastic, had brought him face to face with the truth. He wanted her. Last night, alone in the cell he had wanted her more than anything.
So what if she was an Indian? Men had taken Indians as wives before. With the exception of Harley, nobody else knew she was Apache, they all took her for Mexican, and if she could fool the Mexicans themselves, then the Americans over the border would be no problem.
He had made his decision.
He finished eating and lit up the cigar that Harley had given him at the jailhouse. White-Wing still watched him openly. It was as if she knew his mind was made up. She said nothing, just looked at him in that way, and he grew conscious of the low neckline of her blouse where the drawstring nestled in the valley between her breasts. They rose and fell with her breathing.
She had noticed the change in him as soon as he had come back. The strange fire she had divined in him first at the settlement had waned after the fight with Crawling-Snake, and all along the trail to Cananea she had watched for it to surface again. Now it had happened. It was back in his eyes as he gazed at her. She knew he had come to terms with it at last. Now it was only a matter of when it would happen.
Outside, the light was beginning to fail and they could both hear Pete still whittling at his stick. The sound stopped, then the door opened.
“I’m going down to the Copper Queen to drink some beer.”
Quantro’s eyes never left White-Wing’s face. “You go along, Pete. I’ll come along later.”
Pete looked at them both and nodded to himself. “It’s a fair night. I think I’ll sleep outside when I get back.”
“You do that,” Quantro said.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you later.”
“Sure.”
Pete closed the door and they heard his boot heels clatter down the porch steps. They were alone again. She leaned forward and touched a match to the hurricane lamp. When the glass was back down, the room was lit by a soft glow. She was smiling now. I have him, she thought, I have him.
“Why do you smile?”
“It is time, white man.”
Quantro crushed out the stub of his cigar on the dirt floor. “Apache, you could be right.”
Her hand was at the drawstring of her blouse. “I have waited for your eyes to fall on me since that day at the creek.”
“I know.”
A cloud passed her eyes. “You are so sure of yourself.”
He pursed his lips. “A man should always be sure. It is the only way to be.”
She smiled. “You said that like an Apache.”
“Maybe I am a little Apache.”
She laughed softly as she came to her feet, her voice tinkling like chimes in the wind. It struck him she hadn’t laughed like that since they had been in the mountains.
“Do you remember the way I looked then, white man?”
The image of her naked, clutching his smoking Winchester to her brown body just after she had shot Crawling-Snake, sprang into his mind.
“Yes,” he said, “but remind me now.”
She tugged at the string and the neck of her blouse fell loose. She stood before him, breasts freed as the material slipped away from her smooth shoulders. Deftly, she kicked away her sandals, then her hands went to her hip to unfasten the skirt. It took only a moment. Blouse and skirt fell to the floor together.
His eyes roamed the lush mounds of her breasts and across the plateau of her softly rounded stomach to the dark pubic triangle that nestled at the junction of