Apache Fire by Raine Cantrell Page A

refuse.”
    â€œWhat was this thing you did?”
    â€œI let her have the old agency house at Sulphur Springs.”
    â€œShe is there, on Chiricahua land?”
    â€œShe’s safe enough, if you’re worried. Mary drives out every few days to see her. There’s been no trouble with your band over her staying there. But you’d better keep away. I can’t guarantee—”
    Niko spun away from him. She was there. All this time he had worried, waiting for word of her, and she was living at Sulphur Springs. Why had no one told him?
    He walked off, ignoring Jeffords’s calls, his hand pressed to his medicine bag, where a button and a curl of hair were all he had of her.
    He had a promise to keep.
    Niko left at first light. No one attempted to stop him, for such was not the way in this renegade band. He traveled light, knowing he could live off the land as he made his way to the Mule Pass Mountains. In the heat of the day, he sought shelter and rested, but the moment his shadow was faint upon the earth, he was moving northeast again.
    From the Mule Pass he headed for the Dragoons, where Cochise’s stronghold lay to the northwest, but he would not endanger them with a visit until he had spoken to his brethren.
    Steady rains fell, for the summer had been an unusually wet one. He was at home here, in this mountainous land with the mescal, the piñon and the oak trees. There was little of the big game left, and the spoils from the raids of the year before, stowed in caves and caches, were long gone.
    How did the woman live? Who hunted for her? Who shared her fire?
    The questions were a goad to spur him on, despite the danger to himself.
    In natural stone bowls, he quenched his thirst with the sweet rainwater and wondered why he had kept himself from the young widows who had escaped into Mexico to know freedom with Geronimo. The answer was there, in the clear reflection of the water, for he saw not himself, but a woman who caught the long rays of the sun within her hair.
    She had accepted a man, and borne him a child. Niko had respected her time of grief. As the seasons were marked by the gathering of food for the body, so, too, did time allow for other needs to flourish.
    His body had healed. It was time, then, for him to know her as a man knows his woman.

Chapter 7
    He had been schooled to wait. Restless prowled his mind and body as the late afternoon slipped away. From the shelter of a shallow cave above, he watched the rain fall on the wooden building that had once housed the agency. As far as he could see across the land in the drizzle, there was no sign of life.
    To lessen the risk to both of them, he had sworn he would wait for the cover of darkness to make his presence known to her. To make sure that his visit was kept secret, he had tethered his horse in a grove of oaks, and come the rest of the way on foot.
    The damp of the rain did not matter. He had been cold and wet before, but never had the smoke curling from a chimney offered tempting warmth. Lantern light revealed her moving within. He resisted the strong pull that urged him to leave his place and rush down there. It was not for a warrior to be open with his feelings.
    When the last of the light was reflected in the puddles below, it was time.
    Niko knew the whites’ practice of banging a fist upon the door, but it was not his way. He stood before the place she had made her home. “ Iszáń , will you welcome me?”
    Inside, Angie nearly dropped the pan of heated water she was holding. All day she had fought this strange feeling of excitement. To hear his voice, the voice of her dreams, brought one hand up to touch her hair. The other she pressed to still a quick-beating heart.
    Lifting the bar from the door, she opened it and peered outside to see him. He stood with legs planted apart, straight and tall, his arms at his sides. She shivered despite the heat of the wood stove, and scanned the area behind