My Heart Belongs in the Superstition Mountains Read online

  “They already left?” Will’s voice cracked.

  “That’s right, sonny.”

  “Are they taking the stage?” Freeland asked.

  Dittmer nodded. The Butterfield would be pulling out about now, westbound. “You might catch ’em if it’s important.”

  Will whirled and dashed down the street toward the next corner. The adobe that served as a stagecoach stop wasn’t far away.

  “Thanks.” Freeland followed his brother with long strides. When he turned the corner, he could see that the yard in front of the stage stop was empty. Will had pulled up short at the edge of the street. A lantern shone inside the small house where the station agent lived. Its light spilled out a window, illuminating Will’s doleful face.

  “They already left.”

  “I’ll speak to Isaac.” Freeland had frequent business with the station agent, and he had no qualms about knocking on the door. The news was as he’d feared, and he returned to his brother.

  “The stage pulled out as soon as they were on it. We’re too late.”

  “She needed help.” Will kicked a pebble across the street.

  Freeland laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. If it had been something serious, Mr. Dittmer would have helped them before they went.”

  “It was serious. She was crying. If you had just hurried a little faster—”

  Freeland sighed. “I can’t be everywhere at once.”

  “Maybe you could—”

  “I’m not riding after the stage, Will. My job is here, and there’s nothing we can do for her now.”

  “That’s what she said. Nobody could do anything. But I told her you could.”

  “You shouldn’t have told her that. You had no idea what the problem was. Maybe she was missing her folks. Didn’t I hear that Indians killed her parents?”

  “I guess so. But I don’t think that was it.”

  Freeland stopped at the corner. He didn’t like to think of all the possible wrongs that could have been done to the poor girl, but he couldn’t ride out of town and pull her off a stagecoach when he had no evidence of a crime. “I’ve got to go back to the jail and stay there tonight. You get on home or Ma will be worried about you.”

  Will shoved his hands into his pockets and trudged away, his shoulders drooping. Freeland gazed after him for a moment, wishing he really could have done something for the girl—and for his little brother. Fifteen was a hard age for a boy with a big imagination, especially when there were so few damsels in distress to rescue.

  Freeland liked his job. Sometimes he did get to help people. The worst thing about it was that he couldn’t always right the wrongs. Tonight he had chosen to detain a man who was endangering people and property, rather than try to help a girl who was weeping in an alley. He ran through it in his mind once more, but he didn’t see how he could have done both. But had he chosen right? He headed for the jail, sending up a silent prayer for a girl he had never met.

  On the boardwalk outside the building, he paused. A young man was racing down the boardwalk.

  “Marshal!”

  “What is it, Len?” Freeland asked.

  “Mr. Stiles said … to come and tell you …” The young man panted. He was a helper at one of the saloons.

  “Is there trouble at the Double Cactus?”

  Len shook his head and caught his breath. “A fella rode in from Maricopa. Said we’re at war.”

  “What?” Freeland stared at him. “With who? Mexico?”

  “No, the Union. Southerners fired on a fort in South Carolina.”

  “When?”

  Len shrugged. “Dunno. A couple weeks ago maybe.”

  “Well, if that don’t beat all. Thanks. And let me know if you hear anything out of Albuquerque or further east.”

  War again. This one had been brewing for a while, he supposed, but he’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this. And would it matter way out here? South Carolina was a world away. Freeland sighed and plodded toward the jail to check on his prisoner.

  Chapter Two

  May 1866

  Tucson, Arizona Territory

  Carmela scanned the audience during the introduction. She hadn’t been in the Southwest since before the war. Tucson was part of the New Mexico Territory then. Now it was part of the new Arizona Territory. The town had grown considerably, but the architecture still followed Mexican tradition, as mud was the building material that was cheapest and most readily available. La Botella Verde was gone, though plenty of saloons still lined the main street, and the new theater took pride of place.

  She remembered a boy who had tried to comfort her in the alley out back of the old saloon. The towheaded lad hadn’t been able to do anything for her, but she had not forgotten his tender heart. Many times over the years she had thought of Will and his assurance that his brother, the deputy marshal, could help her. Would he still be living in Tucson? She searched for a man with curly blond hair, knowing her heart would recognize him should she see him again. But no one in the audience fit the mental picture she cherished—the young paladin who had cared about her distress.

  “It’s been more than ten years since my niece was rescued by cavalrymen,” Uncle Silas was saying. Carmela hoped none of them did the arithmetic too closely. They had last been here five years ago, just two years after her parents had died. Her uncle had adjusted the timeline after they hurried eastward at the outbreak of the war. He said people would be more sympathetic if they thought she’d been captured at a young age.

  “She has been able to readjust to her life in our world, but her memories are still fresh, and she will tell you about the privations and brutal mistreatment she suffered under the hands of the heathen.”

  Carmela gritted her teeth. As she grew older, Uncle Silas embellished her life story more and more. He seemed to think the people wanted to hear about violence and abuse, while Carmela preferred to talk about how the tribes made their clothing, the plants they used for medicine, and the way they crafted their household goods. That was boring, Uncle Silas insisted, though she must know those things in order to sound authentic. But the crowds wanted to know how badly the savages had treated her, and if she expected people to pay good money, she would have to give them what they wanted.

  She made it through the performance once more, and the audience seemed enthusiastic in their applause and kind words to her, but she couldn’t shake off an uneasiness that had shadowed her since they rode the stagecoach into Arizona. When she was here five years ago, she had been young and naive. Now she scarcely believed they got away with the lies. People traveled more, and here in the Southwest were many people who had contact with the Indian tribes. How could they not know she told falsehoods? Her fear was that she would slip up and someone knowledgeable would expose her.

  They stayed overnight in Tucson this time. They would take a stage in the morning, heading north for Prescott, the territorial capital in the wilderness.

  They would have to share the coach with whatever passengers and freight the driver took on. Since the beginning of the war, the Butterfield Overland had suspended its regular runs through the Gadsden Purchase. But communication was needed between towns like Tucson, Yuma, Prescott, and Albuquerque, and so several men had jumped to open new lines. Service was reported to be sporadic, and the vehicles weren’t as easy riding as the trains in the East or the Concord coaches Carmela had become familiar with. But Uncle Silas was sure they would make a lot of money in Prescott, where Carmela had never before appeared.

  At their early breakfast, Uncle Silas ate heartily but had no kind words for Carmela.

  “You’ve got to put more feeling into it.” He frowned as he reached for another biscuit.

  “I’m sorry.” Carmela immediately regretted the words. Why must she apologize for lying without enthusiasm? She cut a bite of pancake with her fork and put it in her mouth, which gave her an excuse not to talk.

  “People want to see the fear and sorrow in your eyes when you tell about your mistreat
ment.”

  This was a perpetual complaint of his, but she shrank from sensationalizing her supposed treatment by the natives. She swallowed and said, “I didn’t hear anyone complain.”

  “It was a full house,” he noted. “I don’t expect they get a lot of entertainment in these parts, since they’re under the Reconstruction government. I shall be surprised if Arizona becomes a state anytime soon.”

  Carmela had heard tales of the Confederates’ short-lived formation of their own Arizona Territory in these southlands, one reason the federal government had chosen to build the new capital farther north. That and the minerals that had been discovered up there. The valley around Prescott reportedly swarmed with miners. Since she didn’t presume to know much about politics, Carmela seldom expressed her opinions on anything. If she did, Uncle Silas would correct her.

  When they finished eating, her uncle grudgingly paid two Mexican boys a half dime apiece to carry their baggage to the stage stop, a nondescript adobe on a side street. Behind it was a large corral with several horses eating their feed from a trough. Any grass inside the fence was long gone.

  Their “coach” waited in the yard—a modified farm wagon with benches fastened down on each side of the bed and a rolled-up canvas top.

  “Morning!” The station agent, a lanky, windblown man in his forties, greeted them. “Heading for Prescott.”

  “That’s right.” Uncle Silas had paid him the day before for their passage.

  The driver was greasing the wheel hubs, and the shotgun rider frowned at Carmela’s trunk. He packed their suitcases close behind the driver’s seat and tied them down. Four horses were hitched to the wagon. They languidly swung their tails to keep the flies moving. To Carmela, they didn’t look very enthusiastic about pulling the loaded coach twenty or thirty miles in the desert sun.

  The agent gave her a hand up. She climbed on the little stool he provided, grasping his hand, and awkwardly stepped into the wagon bed. She sat down on one of the side benches, behind the driver’s seat. As was customary, Uncle Silas would sit beside her so that no strangers could get too close to Carmela. Ordinarily, she would cover the lower part of her face with a fascinator or a shawl, but the heat was already intense and would probably be unbearable by noon. No shawls today.

  Carmela disliked travel on principle. Locomotives were noisy and smoky, and as often as not she ended a rail trip with holes in her skirt from flying cinders. But they were comparatively swift, and she could open or close the windows and take a berth for the night on some trains. In this wagon, she would be exposed to the elements, and there were no berths.

  Other passengers were boarding—two men who appeared to be ranchers and a bearded fellow with a canvas carryall, a bulging burlap sack, and a bundle of mining tools. They sat in a row opposite Carmela and gazed without apology at her tattooed face. She instinctively put a gloved hand over her chin, though she knew she couldn’t sit that way all day. When people saw her chin, they always stared, but she had to wear the hated tattoos. It was all part of her story. She couldn’t spend the entire trip covering them. Slowly, she lowered her hand but avoided making eye contact with any of the men.

  Uncle Silas stayed on the ground to make sure the luggage was all loaded and secured. Her trunk of stage costumes was loaded last, partly blocking the tailgate, where people had to get in and out. The shotgun rider and station agent hefted it in, muttering to each other. Uncle Silas scowled at them. After all, he had paid a premium for the extra luggage.

  He climbed in at last, and Carmela passed him his cushion before he sat down next to her. She had bought small seat cushions on the advice of a woman in Albuquerque, where she had performed more than a week ago, and she was glad to have them now. The plain wooden benches would jounce and pound them mercilessly. This wagon didn’t even have the leather thorough braces that Concord coaches had, to let the passengers sway gently on the coaches’ frames instead of bouncing continually.

  To her surprise, when she had thought they were nearly ready to leave, a man wearing a badge entered the yard. A second man walked beside him, chained to his left wrist. The lawman looked young for one of his career. He had a pleasant face, if a bit careworn.

  Carmela caught her breath and stared at him. She was nearly twenty now, and this man looked a few years older than her, perhaps as old as twenty-five. He couldn’t be Will, her champion. Or could he? She knew she ought not to stare, but she was sure she saw a bit of pale hair, bleached almost white by the Arizona sun, peeping out from beneath the broad brim of his hat.

  He spoke to the station agent then had the prisoner climb up before him. Awkwardly, they both scrambled into the wagon bed then squeezed around Carmela’s trunk and the pick and shovel. They sat down with the marshal next to Uncle Silas and the prisoner on the end. The three men opposite turned their attention to the new arrivals, allowing Carmela a moment’s peace. She was glad the lawman wasn’t seated opposite her. Staring back would be far too big a temptation.

  He and the prisoner adjusted their positions, settling in for the long ride, and she exhaled heavily. He was not Will, she was sure. But she remembered he had said his brother was a deputy marshal—one who could help her. Was this man Will’s brother? And could he still hold the same job after the chaos brought on by the war?

  She had hardly noticed his prisoner, having only a fleeting impression of hard eyes and scruffy beard. But his warder, the lawman—now, there was a handsome man.

  Uncle Silas leaned toward her and whispered, “We need to go over the bit about when the tribe was in its winter camp, but I guess we’ll have to wait until our next hotel. I didn’t figure on so much company on this part of the trip.”

  Carmela nodded but said nothing.

  One of the men across from them said, “Morning.” He grinned, exposing a gap in his tobacco-stained teeth.

  Carmela smiled back and nodded. Despite their rude stares, she was glad for the men’s presence. They would keep Uncle Silas from discussing the finer points of her recitals during the trip.

  “All right if we board first?” Freeland asked Dwight Herder, the stagecoach driver, after their first stop. They had paused for fifteen minutes at a way station and were about to resume their northward journey. The two ranchers had left them, but they were adding two more miners and a freighter going north on business.

  The driver scratched his chin through his graying beard. “Prob’ly a good idea. Get the prisoner settled before the other passengers load.”

  Freeland nodded to the felon handcuffed to his wrist. “Get in. Sit toward the front of the wagon.” He extended his left arm so that Rudy Dix could navigate the climb without too much trouble. While he didn’t like being handcuffed to his prisoner, Freeland considered it prudent while traveling.

  The tight quarters of a stagecoach for the journey invited close scrutiny. At least if he had Dix in a corner between the side and front end of the wagon, he would have more control over the man’s interaction with other passengers.

  Of necessity, he followed Dix closely and sat beside him on the left-hand bench. He hoped no more passengers arrived. They already had six, besides him and Dix. The miners and the freighter were the usual variety in these parts. He hadn’t gotten a good look at the couple earlier, but when they had disembarked at the way station, he had noticed the markings on the young woman’s face. The man was older and well dressed. Freeland wondered about them.

  The two climbed in and took the seats they had occupied before, now directly opposite him and Dix. Perhaps he would learn more about her.

  He was glad the canvas was rolled up, so the air wouldn’t be so close in the stage. Before they’d left Tucson, he had insisted that the prisoner wash himself thoroughly and had provided him with clean clothing. A man who had been cooped up in a cell for a month wasn’t the most pleasant company under ordinary circumstances, but squeezed into a stagecoach with half a dozen other people, it could get right distasteful.

  “I liked it better on the other
end,” Dix said.

  Freeland scowled at him. “Hush. You’re fine right where you’re sitting.” He had let the prisoner stroll about for a few minutes at the stop, knowing he would be confined for a long, long time when their journey ended. But Dix was known as a violent man, one who would resort to any means he could to escape justice. Freeland felt safer when they were sitting in the wagon and nobody was moving around.

  The other four men took their seats, and Freeland hoped that was the lot of them. He tried not to stare at the young woman across the way. The man beside her didn’t appear to do anything to assure her comfort—quite the opposite. She was the one who took charge of the seat cushions and offered him a clean handkerchief from her handbag. Her father, perhaps? He looked to be forty-five or fifty, and his thinning hair was oiled with something that smelled more pungent than the girl’s scent. He studied their fellow passengers with a sharp eye.

  All of the men stared at the young woman, and Freeland let his gaze drift back to her. His stomach knotted at the sight of the dark geometrical markings on her chin. Tribal tattoos, but the girl was definitely white. He’d heard of a few Indian captives who had been tattooed, and one stood out in his mind. Was this the girl who had come to Tucson five years ago and spoken about her captivity? If so, she would be the same girl his brother had begged him to help.

  He had almost forgotten about that girl, until he’d seen handbills around town advertising her “return appearance” this week. It had to be her. He had meant to go around to the theater last night and see if he could meet her, but the goings-on at the saloons and the newly opened dance hall had kept him busy. So this was the maiden Will had wanted him to rescue.

  If he stared at her eyes and ignored the tattoos, he could imagine her face without the disfiguring ink. She had grown into a beauty. Her brown eyes retreated behind down-swept lashes. Beneath her hat, her glossy brown hair caught a glint of sunlight. No wonder Will had been so taken by her. She seemed poised, and Freeland was pretty sure she was not still in need of rescuing.