Sabers West (A Long-Knives Western Book 2) by Patrick E. Andrews

Author:Patrick E. Andrews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sabers, redskins, westerns online, westerns ebook, best western novel, patrick e andrews, bluebelly, us army 1880s, western us cavalry
Publisher: Piccadilly Publishing

Chapter Twelve

Netta Druce, refreshed from her night’s sleep, walked into the kitchen of the home she shared with her husband on the Red River Agency. There was still an early morning chill in the spring air. Netta instinctively pulled the shawl on her shoulders tighter. “Isn’t the fire built up yet?” she asked her young Mexican housekeeper Inez.

“No, Señora,” she answered. “I am putting the wood in the stove now.”

“Mr. Druce will be cranky if his coffee is late,” Netta complained.

Inez, a feisty nineteen-year-old, shrugged her indifference. “There is no water anyway.” The young woman had spent three years as a captive of the Chogolas. She’d been virtually unnoticed in the village because of her dark skin coloring, but several soldiers from Fort Alexander had finally become attracted to the pretty girl. They were the ones who found out Inez was Mexican. She had learned to speak a bit of English because of living near the Texas border. A brief conversation alerted them to her true position in the tribe. The troopers wasted no time in informing their company commander of the situation. Consequently, a great effort was launched to free her. When the Indians finally agreed to let Inez go, everyone involved was surprised when Inez strongly expressed her desire to stay at the agency rather than go back to her home village in Mexico.

She had been captured during a bold Comanche raid on a market town in Chihuahua. After being carried off and raped, she was kept as a squaw by a Chogola warrior. Inez knew that these unhappy circumstances, though beyond her control, would make her considered no less than a whore by her own people. Even the young Mexican woman’s parents would have had nothing to do with her, and none of the young men would have taken her as a wife. If she did go back to Mexico, there was every chance that she would have eventually been driven into prostitution. At least at the agency she had the opportunity to meet lonely soldiers. With a bit of luck she knew she would eventually be married to one. Washing clothes on Soap Suds Row was preferable to life in a bordello crib.

Netta joined Inez in the morning chores. She liked working in the kitchen. The tasks kept her hands busy and allowed her mind to dwell on other things such as daydreaming about the handsome Sergeant Guy DuBose. Although she’d denied it to herself for many months, Netta finally had to admit that she was profoundly and seriously attracted to the soldier. His good manners, soft manner of speaking, and courtly grace were irresistible to even this devoutly Christian woman.

Her husband Palmer was an impatient, excitable man. The slightest break in routine or even a small mistake on her part in running the agency store would set him off into hours of scolding and complaining. He constantly monitored her classes with the Indian children and found fault in every lesson she taught. Their evenings were filled with hours of criticism and petulant lectures that drove her to tears.

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