Trilby by Diana Palmer

an enormous tree with a bent trunk “—is a cottonwood. A few decades ago, people used to strip off the bark and scrape the tree for sap. It’s sweet, you see, like a confection.”
    “Oh,” she cried delightedly, “how clever!”
    “And those are willows,” he added, gesturing toward a stand of sapling-type trees along the banks of the stream.
    She looked around suddenly. “Is it safe here?” she asked quickly. “I mean, are there Indians near here?”
    He smiled. “Plenty of them. Mostly Mescalero and Mimbrenos Apaches. There used to be a wealth of Chiricahuas, but when Geronimo was captured, the government shipped his whole band back East to Florida and kept them in a fort on the bay at St. Augustine for a long time. They finally moved them back out to New Mexico. Geronimo killed a lot of white people, but then, the white people killed a lot of Apaches, too. Gen. George Crook finally got him to surrender. Quite a fellow, old Nantan Lupan. ”
    “What?”
    “Grey Wolf. It’s what the Apaches called Crook. They respected him. When he gave his word, he kept it. Odd for a white man. He did all he could to help the Apaches for the rest of his life, after Geronimo’s surrender. Geronimo died February of last year.”
    “I didn’t know that.”
    He glanced at her. “You Easterners don’t know much about Indians, do you? Apaches are interesting. They called the old Chiricahua chief Cochise, but his Apache name was Cheis. It means oak. God only knows how it got altered to Cochise. He was a wily old devil, smart as a fox. He led the U.S. Cavalry on a merry chase until the peace came. But Geronimo refused to give up and live at the white man’s mercy on a reservation. There were times, not so long ago, when just the name Apache could make a grown man tremble out here.”
    She kept quiet, waiting for him to go on. She was fascinated with his knowledge of the Indians.
    He smiled, sensing her interest. That pleased him. “Indians are not ignorant. I have two Apache men who work for me. One of them is Chiricahua. And he is,” he added dryly, “hardly the Eastern image of an Indian. You’ll see what I mean when you meet him. His name is Naki.”
    “What does it mean?” she asked curiously.
    “He’s actually called Two Fists, but Apache has glottal stops and nasalizations and high tones… I can’t pronounce his second name. Naki means ‘two.’”
    “Are you…do you have any Indian blood?”
    He shook his head. “My grandmother was a pretty little Spanish lady. They had a little girl. My grandfather got tired of the responsibility and deserted her.” He let that slip. He’d never told anyone else.
    “Didn’t he love her enough to stay?”
    He grew stiff. “Apparently not. My grandmother starved to death. If it hadn’t been for my great-uncle, the one who owned Los Santos, my mother would have starved, too. She and my father inherited Los Santos when my great-uncle died. I was eighteen when Mexicans raided up here and killed them.”
    “Did you have brothers or sisters?”
    “I was one of three kids; I had two sisters,” he said. “They both died of cholera.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “I was just a kid at the time. I don’t remember much about them.” He smoked his cigarette as they walked, his head high. He walked without stooping, his posture perfect, like his clothing. For a cowboy, he wore the suit very well.
    “You said your grandmother was Spanish…”
    “And you wonder why Mexicans attacked her daughter and son-in-law,” he guessed.
    “Yes.”
    “Don’t you know yet that most Mexicans hate the Spanish? It’s one of the reasons they’re fighting now. They’ve had Spanish domination since Cortés. They’ve had enough,” he replied simply. “But the people whokilled my parents weren’t revolutionaries. They were just bandits.”
    “I’m sorry. About your parents, I mean.”
    “So was I.”
    There was a wealth of pain in the words, and she remembered reluctantly how his