Foxfire by Anya Seton

Author:Anya Seton [Seton, Anya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

She awoke at six to see Dart’s face bending close to hers, his gray eyes looking down at her with anxious affection and some humor. Forgetting where she was, she gave a soft cry of welcome and put her arms around his neck. He kissed her and said, “How’re you doing? I gather you got some sleep.”

She struggled up on her elbow, staring around the dim, deserted wickiup. She looked down at the rumpled gray blanket, at her camel’s hair top coat in which she had slept. Then she remembered.

“Oh, Dart—your mother

“She’s much weaker but peaceful. The women’re tending her. She says that she will go away as the sun sets. I think she knows.” Instinctively he used the Apache euphemism for death.

“Come along,” he said briskly. “I’ve rustled up some coffee for us. Then I’ll take you downstream a bit. We could both use a wash.”

She clambered stiffly off her cot and shook herself. She took her pocket comb and compact from her purse. “Holy heaven, what a mess—” she murmured trying to comb her hair. “Dart, I itch all over,” she looked up at him startled, scratching vigorously at her stomach. “Fiery itches. What’s the matter with me?”

He bent over, pulled up her cotton shirt and examined her stomach. “Fleas—my love.” He grinned at her expression. “Maybe one or two other bugs as well. I’ll delouse you as soon as we’ve eaten.”

She moistened her lips, her eyes moved from his amused face to the blanket, and it seemed to her that all her flesh crawled. “Disgusting.” she whispered. Filthy savages—she thought. Nothing would induce me to spend another night in this horrible place. And Dart could laugh. Could laugh because he was really—She clamped her lips tight over the sudden bitter words that rushed against them.

“Come get your coffee,” Dart said. Her thoughts were transparent enough and he was no longer smiling. “I can get someone to take you back to the superintendent’s house at the Agency. They have modern plumbing and all the comforts. They’ll let you stay there until—until I can come.”

She said nothing. She followed him out to the outdoor cooking fire and accepted the tin mug of coffee he poured for her. She ate one from Rowena’s stack of cold tortillas, and some small cakes like hamburgers made from acorns, and the dried sticky fruit of the giant saguaro, all of which Dart handed her silently. She found that she was so ravenous that the strange flavors were unimportant.

While they ate nobody came near them. Rowena was in with Saba. John had ridden off into the hills with the other men to look for newborn calves amongst their clan herd. There were people around the more distant wickiups, women walking in and out of the ramadas in their flounced, brightcolored dresses, and children playing, but nobody even glanced in their direction.

As Amanda finished the last bite of tortilla, there was a commotion on the rutted road and a horse-drawn wagon app ... red by the side of the farthest wickiup.

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