Winter's Camp. Jodi Thomas

was waiting for him in a bank.

      “If these traders know you’re squattin’ near here, they’ll come calling and think nothing of killing you and taking back their goods. You might have been the great Captain Kirkland in the war, but out here alone you’ll be nothing but dead if they find you.”

      James nodded. It had been seven years since the war and he still couldn’t shake his past. Even Two Fingers, who hadn’t known him long, had picked up on how some of the men had treated him in Fort Worth. Halfway into the War Between the States, he’d gone mad and ignored danger. He had been lucky to have survived but in the years since, his legend had seemed to grow, not fade, as he wished it would.

      When he’d hired Two Fingers, James’s plan had simply been to scout the land, but once he’d seen the beauty he’d known he would have to stay a while if this was the place he planned to live out the rest of his life. With his hunting skills and more supplies, he could survive the winter alone.

      Now that Two Fingers had started talking, he couldn’t seem to stop. “A man without a horse in this country might as well whittle his own headstone.”

      When James didn’t answer, Two Fingers continued. “Most of the men we’ll run across today are just traders. A few might even be rangers looking for captives taken in raids.” He shook his head. “Lots were kidnapped during the war years without menfolk around. The children and the women go wild or crazy after a while. Lawmen do them no good by taking them back.”

      James had heard the stories. “I’m not interested in captives or the slave trade. I’m only here for horses.” The war against slavery might be over, but no one had told the outlaws and Comanche. Ransom for captives could pay well.

      As they moved into the crossover shadows, James made out a dozen men camped at the bottom of the canyon along the riverbank. Goods were laid out on blankets and stacked in wagon beds. Movement in the cedars told him more traders with mule teams were in the shade. He noticed Comanche traders and what looked like outlaws from both sides of the Rio Grande. They were hard, weathered men who wore their supply of bullets crossed over their chests.

      He spotted a makeshift corral with thirty or more horses. Most looked like half-wild mustangs, but they’d do. He needed horses or mules to pack supplies in and hides out come spring. If the hunting was good over the cold months, he would make enough to stock the new place for a year, maybe more.

      As they walked their horses closer only a few people in the clearing seemed to notice them. A small group of Apache camped by the water, the women mostly doing the work while the men traded. The chief stood tall in the center of the camp even though he had to be over fifty. They were a ragged group, the leftovers of a tribe whose young braves had been killed in battle. The few ponies they had looked too young to break to saddle. One sported an army brand.

      James was about to turn away when he caught sight of a woman standing at the edge of the Apache camp. She was wrapped in a dirty blanket as mud-covered as her face and hands. She simply stood staring at the ground; not moving, not interested in his passing.

      One of the older women in the tribe walked near and struck her with a stick. The muddy woman, with hair so matted it might never comb out, finally looked up.

      For a moment James could only stare. Her huge eyes, framed in dark circles, looked wild and mindless, but they were the crystal blue of a mountain lake.

      “Best move along, Kirkland,” Two Fingers ordered.

      They moved on toward the main camp. “Did you see the color of her eyes?” James whispered. “She has to be a captive.”

      Two Fingers shook his head. “When I was a boy, I ran away thinking I’d be free, not a slave like my ma, but Apache found me. I was lucky. I was taken in by the tribe, treated as good as if I were a real son. I learned the language and had a grand time living the life, but now and then I’d see a woman who’d been traded from tribe to tribe as though she was nothing but a horse. No—a woman like that is lower than a horse. If they were lucky, if you want to call it that, they were taken in as a third or fourth wife. They’d do all the work the other wives didn’t want to do and only eat when there was plenty. The number-one wife usually had the right to beat the last wife and did regularly.”

      Two Fingers swore in Spanish. “If they weren’t so lucky, they fought for scraps with the dogs. Once they started looking and acting like that woman we passed, there was no hope. If they didn’t kill themselves or get beaten to death, they were left to die. Her mind’s gone, Kirkland. Don’t look at her. Some say if you do, she’ll steal your soul and take it down to hell with her.”

      James thought he was beyond caring about anyone but himself; that his heart and soul had hardened to rock. He’d lost every friend he’d had in the war. He had lived so long without a family he’d decided he never wanted one. Never wanted anyone to die on him. Never wanted someone grieving when he died. It didn’t matter that he felt sorry for the woman covered in mud. He could not save her or heal her.

      “She’s mad,” Two Fingers said again as they climbed off the horses. “Forget her. I knew an Irish trapper once who bought a woman crazy like her. She stabbed him in his heart the first time he fell asleep. In some tribes when a woman covers up in mud like that the tribe calls her ‘no one.’ She’s nothing to anyone. She’s no more than part of the dirt.”

      “Why don’t they just kill her?” The leather creaked when James leaned his long frame forward in the saddle.

      Two Fingers shrugged. “You don’t kill nothing, Kirkland.”

      They moved into the group of traders. James forced himself not to look back for a while. But when he did, the woman was just standing as before, wrapped in her ragged blanket, her eyes glazed over. The rest of the tribe moved around her as if she wasn’t there.

      James traded for the supplies he’d need and paid five times what he would have at a fort, but he didn’t have the time to make the long trip back to a settlement or town.

      As he packed the supplies on the two mustangs he’d bought, Two Fingers moved up to his side. “We’d better be getting out of the canyon. If we have to camp here tonight, one of us might wake up dead.” He pointed a thumb at James.

      “What makes you think it would be me?”

      “Same reason rattlers don’t usually strike each other.” He glared at James. “I’m one of them. I may have been born a slave, but I consider myself Apache. The reason you’re still alive, Captain Kirkland, is that I figure I might need you one day. Times are changing in this part of the country. Maybe not this year or the next, but they’re changing. I can feel it in my bones. When they do, men like me won’t be tolerated. Men like you will run this country. I do this for you, Kirkland, and you’ll return the favor one day.”

      “What makes you so sure?” James asked.

      “‘Cause you’re an honorable man. The only one in this canyon, I’m guessing. So whatever else you need, I’ll help with the bargaining. When we leave, we part ways, but you remember me and one day I’ll ask for that favor.”

      “All right, Two Fingers, but I have a small request before we go. I want you to bargain for one more thing.”

      “What’s that, Kirkland?”

      “The woman.” James glanced toward the mud woman. All day, she had barely moved. Twice he’d seen the old woman hit her with a stick to move her further from the campfire. Both times the blow had almost knocked her down. Now, she was so far away from the fire, she could not have felt the heat, assuming she could feel anything at all.

      Two Fingers shook his head. “You don’t want her. She’s mostly dead already.”

      “You don’t understand. I don’t want her. I want to help her.”

      Two Fingers waved his hands in the air with the two remaining fingers on his left hand pointing to the sky as he swore. Finally he turned to James, still cussing. “I knew I shouldn’t have gotten mixed up with an honorable man.