Free Apache Flame by Madeline Baker Page B

with obvious distrust. “White
Robe has never mentioned having a son of warrior age.”
    Mitch stared at the warrior, his breath trapped in his
throat. It seemed his heart stopped for a moment before pounding in his ears.
“What did you say?”
    The warrior looked at him strangely. “White Robe did not
mention she was expecting you.”
    “She’s here?” Mitch asked hoarsely. “My mother is here?”
    “Is that not why you have come here?”
    “No.” Mitch blinked rapidly, fighting back the tears that
burned his eyes. “I thought she was dead. I wanted to meet her people, learn
their ways.”
    “Come,” the warrior said. “We will take you to White Robe.”
    Mitch searched his memory, trying to recall the Apache word
for thank you. His mother had often spoken to him in her language until his
father put a stop to it. Sadly, Mitch had forgotten most of what he had
learned.
    “ Ashoge,” Mitch said.
    With a nod, the warrior gestured for Mitch to follow. The
other three men turned and went back up the trail to guard the entrance to the
stronghold.
    She couldn’t be here, Mitch thought as he followed the
warrior through a narrow pass. She was dead.
    A short time later, the pass widened onto a wide green
valley surrounded by tall cliffs. Mitch stared at the tipis spread in
concentric circles on the valley floor, at the men and women immersed in their
daily tasks, at the children running half-naked along the stream that meandered
through the center of the valley. Stared, and felt a stirring deep within his
soul, a calling to that part of him that he had resisted for so long.
    He had never been here before, yet it all seemed achingly
familiar, like the echo of a song long forgotten, the last vestiges of a dream
that elude the memory upon waking.
    He took a deep breath, drawing in the scents around him—the
smoke from a cook fire, the smell of roasting meat, sage and earth and pine.
There was a sweet savor to the very air itself, and it smelled like home.
    When they reached the village, the warrior stopped in front
of a large tipi located in the shade of an ancient pine. “This is White Robe’s
lodge.”
    “ Ashoge ,” Mitch said. He sat there for a moment,
trying to compose himself, telling himself it couldn’t be his mother, it was
just a woman who had the same name.
    Dismounting, he ground-tied the bay, then rapped on the
lodge flap.
    His heart was pounding like a drum as the flap was pulled
back and he saw his mother standing in the opening.
    Mitch shook his head. “I don’t believe it. He told me you
were dead.”
    The woman looked at him, clearly not recognizing him.
    “It’s me,” he said. “Mitch.”
    She leaned forward a little, her gaze moving over him.
“Otter,” she murmured, her expression and voice mirroring her disbelief. “No.
It cannot be. He told me you had died of a fever.”
    “When did he tell you that?”
    “I went back to visit you a few months after I left your
father. I hoped he might have changed. I missed you, and thought perhaps I
would stay with him. He said I was not welcome there, and that you had died of
smallpox.”
    She stepped back, motioning for him to enter her lodge
    “I guess he lied to us both,” Mitch said, ducking inside.
“If he wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him.”
    “He is dead then?”
    “Yeah, got himself killed in a poker game. Somebody caught
him with a fifth ace.”
    White Robe let out a sigh that might have been regret, but
Mitch didn’t think so. Relief would be more like it.
    He thought of all the years he had missed with his mother
because of his old man’s lies and knew he had never hated his father more than
he did at that moment. “I never understood how you got hooked up with him in
the first place.”
    “He was very handsome, and I was very young.” She shrugged.
“It is bad luck to speak of the dead. Let us not speak of him anymore.”
    “ Shi ma. ” He whispered the Apache word for mother,
his voice ragged with emotion as he