St. Agnes’ Stand

She closed her eyes tighter and prayed fervently for Sister Ruth’s soul; she did not pray for her death. Even though she knew of the things that the Apache did to women captives, her faith would not allow her to pray for death. But she could pray for Sister Ruth to have the strength and the peace of the abiding Almighty, and she did. Then she prayed over and over again for Ruth’s precious soul. When she was done, she felt weak and alone. She asked the Saviour to comfort Sister Ruth in her hour of need, and she began to talk quietly to her, the way she had once talked at night in her heart to her own father when she was a novice in the convent. She had been deeply troubled then as well.

She felt a gentle warmth inside at the thought of her father. Sister Ruth and he were similar in so many ways. They were both possessed of great pride; not evil pride as some have, but rather a sense of rightness in their actions and being. Stubborn, too. Sister St Agnes smiled at the thought and her mind drifted effortlessly to her father, now dead, whom she loved so much. A Baptist minister, he had never spoken to her after she had become a Catholic and entered the convent.

She was silent for a few moments, and then in a soft, mothering tone she said, ‘Sister Ruth, forget where you are now, forget everything, let go of this world. Let Jesus hold you and comfort you. He’s coming for you, Ruth, turn away and run to Him.’ She was sobbing softly now, not in sorrow, not in joy, simply in farewell. She was smiling through her tears.

After she had composed herself, Sister St Agnes began her second prayer. She appeared to straighten her small body somewhat and she squeezed the crucifix tightly between the palms of her hands. ‘Jesus,’ she whispered, her voice intensifying, ‘I have never asked for a miracle. I have never deserved one. I’ve never asked for a thing for myself, though You Yourself, Lord, said: “Ask and it shall be given.” I am willing to die in this place if that is Your will … but …’ Her words failed her. She clutched harder at the cross in her hands, and for the first time in her life, she felt herself sweating beneath her habit. She shuddered as if a hand had touched her, and the desert night felt oddly cold and penetrating. ‘Dear Saviour Jesus, send one who will deliver the others from this evil.’

Sister St Agnes slept.

Nat Swanson sat bolt upright in his sleep, and yelled. The dog came close to him and stared into his face. He reached a trembling hand out toward it and it growled at him and moved away. Swanson was drenched with sweat and he stood up, shaken. He had never yelled like that before in his life and he didn’t like it. He sat down on a rock and tried to piece together what had caused it. He looked at his hands; they were still trembling. It was a beautiful, starry night. The dog came and sat down a distance away and watched him, curious. The moon was three-quarters full and seemed to move among brilliant white clouds.

Swanson knew he had been dreaming. That in itself was strange, since he could not recall having ever dreamed before. But he was certain that he had been dreaming. About what, he didn’t know. Except that he knew it had something to do with the woman at the wagons. He had seen her face again – a face surrounded by utter darkness – and he had yelled a yell that felt like it had been trapped inside of him all his days. Swanson shook slightly. He called the dog but the animal only stared at him, its fur up on its back.

Three hours before dawn, Nat Swanson cinched the mule up tight and started on again. He rode chewing on a piece of jerky; he tried to stay alert to the trail and the surrounding hills, but his mind kept drifting back to the wagons and the woman. An hour later, he stopped and sat thinking. He felt oddly chilled. The dog was watching him closely, giving him a wide berth.

He rubbed his eyes; he couldn’t shake the memory of her face. She didn’t look like anyone he had ever known. She wasn’t handsome. She wasn’t marrying age. He could no longer remember what his own mother looked like, so she couldn’t remind him of her. It didn’t make sense. There was a new life waiting for him in California. But now, strangely, it was on the periphery of his thoughts. Try as he would, he couldn’t get his mind off the face at the wagons. He just sat there, the mule grazing, the dog watching him.

When dawn came and he was still sitting there, still thinking about her, he turned the mule around and started back to the canyon.

He stood glassing the arroyos and ridgebacks, looking for a way he could reach the wagons. There was none that wouldn’t get him killed, unless he waited until dark, and by that time, he figured, it would be too late. The Apaches were growing bolder. Nine of them were standing on the road, some behind the rocks, some in plain view of the wagons.

Two young bucks who walked like they had been drinking mescal marched boldly out in front of the wagons, turned and pulled their breechcloths up and then, tauntingly, slapped their buttocks. The Hawken rifle barked again; and, startled, the two darted unceremoniously for cover down the rocky slope, their comrades laughing at them. Swanson shook his head, amazed anyone could miss with a rifle at that distance.

Minutes later, the Apaches were tossing fist-sized rocks over the wagons and yelling taunts. Twice on the wind, he heard their word for whore. This wasn’t going to last much longer; soon a brave would get high enough on peyote or mescal, grab a lance and rush the wagons, others would follow, and it would be over.

Unpleasant as it was to think of the woman dying in this way, it gave him an odd idea, one that just might work. As quickly as caution would allow, he mounted and rode the mule into the shadows of a scrub oak that stood alongside the main ridge trail overlooking the canyon. He held the cocked crossbow in his hands as he searched for the two Indians who had been slapping their buttocks at the wagons. He singled them out because they were the most brazen of the band, most eager to be at the victims behind the wagons.

They were standing behind the boulders on the road now, dancing rhythmically in place, moving their arms in strange gyrations, wildly intoxicated and dangerous. Swanson picked the closest. He guessed the distance at over six hundred feet, very close to the crossbow’s maximum range. The quarrel head would not hit with enough impact to kill, so he slipped a bodkin, stiletto-like, long and slender, razor-honed steel that could sever a spinal cord or cut through four or five inches of muscle and bone, into the firing groove. It was a chance shot and it might give him away, but he needed time.

Swanson aimed a good half inch above the head of the Indian, hoping to catch him through a lung, but the shot was low, taking the brave in the stomach. The man began to flip and writhe on the ground. He would die, but it would be a long, painful death. Swanson took no pleasure in the thought. He kicked the mule into a trot.

Sun, ants and flies had been at the Mexican’s head for three days and it no longer looked human. The fetid stench of both the man and the woman made him sick. The dog would not come close, but the mule was not bothered. To keep from vomiting, Swanson tossed loose dirt on the dead man’s head until it was almost covered; then he tied the dead woman to a travois lashed to the saddle and headed at a trot for the canyon.

It took him half an hour to rope the corpse on to the mule. When he finished, he tied a blanket, cape-like, around the dead woman’s neck and down her back to hide the two sticks of manzanita he had used to prop her upright. She looked grotesque, stiff and bloated, yet oddly militant and alive in her death pose. The effect was exactly what Swanson was aiming for. Strangely, for so warlike a people, the Apaches had a horror of death, and an equal horror of evil spirits. And in death this naked woman, with one breast cut off, the other savagely shredded, her abdomen split from breastbone to where her pubic area had once been, her eyes burned-out holes, looked frighteningly evil.

Once started, the mule would follow the trail to the bottom. Swanson slapped the animal hard on the rump and quickly, shouldering a heavy deerskin pack, moved out in an awkward, limping dogtrot. The pain in his leg was worse, and the wound had begun to bleed again. He stopped midway down the mountain and looked for the mule. It was moving in a careful gait, the dead woman rocking awkwardly on its back, what was left of her red hair blowing in a light breeze.

Swanson crouched in the chaparral until he heard the first frightened yell. The mule was standing at the foot of the slope with the woman still on its back, and panic-stricken Apaches were running away in fear.

He hit the open stretch of rocks between him and the wagons on a dead run, paying no mind to the fire in his thigh. He was past the nearest Apache before the man knew he was there. He ran on, twisting, waiting for the arrow from the warrior’s bow. It never came. Up the slope he went, his legs driving, charging for the gap between the wagons. ‘White man … amigo coming in … don’t shoot,’ he yelled. It did no good. The Hawken boomed out at him. But whoever was handling the weapon was a lousy shot and missed, and he was safe behind the wagons. He sprawled on his belly, breathing hard, pistol drawn waiting for the rush.

‘Get ready … Cuidado,’ he hissed. ‘They may try to rush us now.’ Out of the side of one eye, he saw what appeared to be a blotch of shadow move; he turned his head and looked directly into her face. He was stunned. A Catholic nun, little and worn looking, was on her knees praying, her eyes fixed on the gap between the wagons, the Hawken rifle smoking in her hands. Quickly, he glanced around the small enclosure; there was no one else. Still stunned, he looked back out from the shadows of the wagon into the bright sunlight. The mule and the woman were in plain view not more than fifty yards away. He glanced at the nun and realized she was staring at the dead woman. She was rocking back and forth quietly in her anguish, her lips moving in silent prayer.

‘You okay, ma’am?’ Swanson asked, not turning to look at her. She didn’t answer. ‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘you need to get yourself ready. We’re getting out of here in a few minutes.’ The nun was deep in prayer and did not answer.

The ruse with the mule had worked better than he had hoped. The Apaches were falling back in panic into the hills. He decided to wait a few more minutes, then take the woman and slip out the north side and head into the high mountains. But it wasn’t to be. The biggest Indian Swanson had ever seen put a stop to the confusion below. He was wearing a blue bandana tied the way slave women did up their hair, a leather vest with silver studs that had probably belonged to one of his Mexican victims, a breech-cloth and white pants tucked in to deerskin boots. He stood a good foot taller than the braves milling nervously behind him. Even at a hundred yards, Swanson could almost feel the man’s rage, like it was a physical thing.

He strode down out of the hills and yanked viciously at the mule’s bridle until the animal reared. But the woman didn’t dislodge and the Indian tore the blanket off the corpse, exposing the manzanita poles that propped her up. He pulled a knife, cut the poles, and then savagely shoved the body out of the saddle. Swanson heard the nun cry out in a gentle, hurt way. The Indian was kicking the corpse now, and the nun was praying out loud. Swanson cocked the crossbow quickly and inserted a quarrel, aiming under the wagon.

‘No,’ the woman said. Somehow the word was not a request, not an order, it was just a statement of what Swanson was going to do. Surprised, he glanced at her. She was still kneeling but now she was looking directly at him. He could tell from the paleness of her wrinkled face that she had spent her life inside a church. The clean neatness of her habit gave her thin, fine features a strange look of calm authority. Her eyes locked on his face with a steady gaze. She looked amazingly crisp and fresh, white against black, amid the dull, hot browns of the desert.

Uncomfortable, Swanson turned back to the Indians. The leader had disappeared, leaving his warriors to kick and slash at the dead woman’s body, their confidence restored. ‘Damn,’ he whispered. Killing the big Apache might have sent the rest of them running. He picked a brave at random and dropped him with a head shot, the others scurried for cover.

Swanson heard the woman suck in her breath when he fired, and now she was praying out loud again. At one place in the prayer he heard her asking forgiveness for him. The thought made him feel awkward.

Neither of them spoke for a long time; the nun watching him and Swanson watching the rocks and hills. He felt her eyes on him. ‘Lady, we aren’t getting out of here without killing some of them.’

‘God didn’t send you to kill.’ Her voice sounded firm but not angry.

‘Ma’am, God didn’t send me. I just came.’ He squinted his eyes against the bright sunlight and scanned the canyon. ‘And if we don’t kill some, they’re going to kill us. Anyhow,’ he said, confused, ‘you tried to kill me.’

‘He sent you.’ Her tone was matter-of-fact. ‘And I only shot into the air.’

That at least explained why none of the shots from the Hawken had done any damage. The nun had been plugging the sky. As for God sending him, Swanson chose not to reply. Let her believe what she would.

‘Do you have water?’

‘In the canteens. But go light, we’re going to be running hard in a few minutes.’

‘The others can’t run,’ she said.

The words seemed to crash down on him. He rolled on his side and looked at the woman as she opened the pack and pulled out one of the canteens. ‘Others?’

She stood without answering and hurried towards the cliff and a large rock. Kneeling, she disappeared into the side of the mountain. Quickly he loaded the Hawken and crawled back to the wagons. There were no Indians in sight, so he aimed at the rocks closest to the wagon and pulled the trigger. The big .54 calibre shell sent rock fragments flying. Figuring that would hold them for a while, he crawled around the rock. There was an opening in the mountain about as wide as a whisky barrel. He had seen these holes before. Twenty years earlier, prospectors had followed the road builders as they cut into the hills, searching for promising colour. When they found some, they would follow it a few feet or yards into the side of the mountain. He looked in but couldn’t see anything in the shadows.

‘Who’s in there?’

After he had waited a few seconds and gotten no answer, he drew his pistol and crawled in. The passage was cut out of sandstone and it was tight for his wide shoulders. He got stuck a couple of times, but after a few yards of crawling the passage widened some and he began to hear voices whispering ahead. Then he was in a larger vault-like cavern, fifteen by fifteen feet wide, and tall enough to stand in. A candle burned on top of a rock near the back, and he could see a black silhouette of a cross dancing against the walls; as his eyes adjusted, he began to see shapes in the room. It was refreshingly cool in the darkness.

‘Who’s in here?’ he asked again.

‘I and Sisters Elizabeth and Martha, and the children,’ the nun said from somewhere in the blackness.

‘Children? How many?’

‘Seven.’

Swanson sat without saying anything for a few minutes, feeling suddenly very tired, and listened to the grateful sounds of the children drinking in the dark. It was obvious from the small animal-like noises they made that they had been dying of thirst.

‘Seven,’ he said.

‘Seven,’ the nun repeated.

He turned and crawled back to the wagons to sort things out in his head. After the cool darkness of the cavern, the air outside felt like a furnace. He sat down against the wall of the cliff, the rocks hot through his shirt, and began to reload the Hawken. The metal of the weapon burned when he touched it. Sweat began to run into his eyes and he tied his bandana around his forehead in the Apache way.

He had come down here to save the woman, he thought, nothing more. And now he had three women and seven children to worry about. Even if he could get all ten of them out without the Apaches knowing, which he doubted, there was no way he could hide that many people, especially kids, in the hills. With just the woman and following the hard rocks, moving back through the Apaches at night instead of running from them, he might have been able to escape. But not with seven kids, crying and making noise, falling behind.

He laid the loaded Hawken down next to him and pulled his pistol. He ran an oiled rag over the weapon, his eyes scanning the space under the wagons as he worked. The Apaches were not likely to charge an armed man in the light of day, but Swanson was not one to be caught off-guard. His head was throbbing. He guessed it was the change in temperature from the cave to the outside, or the wound in his leg, which was beginning to hurt badly again. He let his mind work over the facts a while. Every way he figured it, it came out the same: he was not getting out of here with ten people. For the first time in his life Nat Swanson felt trapped. He could run, but …

What had seemed like a fool’s errand before now seemed like a desperate gamble gone terribly wrong; he could almost hear his mother’s voice warning him against leaning too hard on a broken reed. He ran his hands through his hair, listening for the sound of her in his memory. There was nothing but the wind. She remained, as always, a shadowy presence in his thoughts. Still, there were things he half-remembered, and he felt she would have done the same thing he had; she, too, would have come for the old nun. He felt a little better. But not much.

Swanson heard a noise to his right and whirled, bringing the pistol up cocked and levelled at the old woman’s head. She stared at him for a second and then walked over and returned the canteen to his pack.

‘That’s what guns do,’ she said, the words hanging in the hot air.

When she didn’t continue, Swanson asked, ‘What?’

‘They make you afraid.’ She stood and walked over to him.

Ignoring the remark, he looked up at her and said, ‘You shouldn’t stand; you’ll be killed.’

‘Perhaps,’ she answered, kneeling down beside him, a candle and a small leather purse in her hands, ‘but only if the Lord wants me to die. And I won’t die afraid.’ She smiled at him. ‘Now let me see your leg.’

‘It’s fine. It’s just a hole.’

‘Let me see your leg, please,’ she said firmly, lighting the candle with a match and sticking it in the sand. ‘From the amount of blood on your pants, it’s more than just a hole, and the children need you.’

Swanson looked into the woman’s face for a few seconds and realized she wasn’t going to let him alone; he stretched his leg out so she could see it. The wound was oozing badly. She opened the purse and took out a small knife and heated the blade in the flame of the candle. Swanson watched her thin, delicate hands as she worked. They were old hands, mottled with liver spots but steady, and it was obvious she had dressed wounds before. She was wearing a wedding ring and this surprised him. Laying the small knife down, she took a pair of scissors and cut the buckskin leggings so she could get at the wound. It wasn’t pretty. The entry hole was small enough, but the bullet had hit bone and flattened out and the wound was deep and ugly and seeping clear fluid and blood, and it was dirty. The skin around it was a festering purple colour. The woman began to reheat the blade of the knife.

‘What is your plan?’ she asked.

Swanson sat staring blindly at the bullet hole for a few seconds. ‘I don’t know.’

She seemed a little startled and then went back to heating the knife. He was thinking that if he’d known about the other nuns and the kids he might not have come at all, but he didn’t say it out loud.

She was watching him closely again. ‘You would have,’ she said after a few moments.

Swanson jumped. ‘Would have what?’

‘You were thinking you wouldn’t have helped if you’d known there were so many of us.’ She waited a second, still staring into his face. ‘You still would have.’ Her voice was matter-of-fact.

He looked into her eyes, surprised she had guessed his thoughts. Then he shrugged it off. He had never not had a choice in his entire life, even if the choice had been to die. He still had choices. He pulled his eyes away from hers and shook his head, looking out at the brilliant sunlight and the canyon. Sweat was running down his neck.

‘This will hurt. Before I start, I want to thank you for saving the children. They were dying.’

‘How long had they been without water?’

‘Two days. But it wasn’t only the water. It was the fear.’

Swanson didn’t understand. He waited for her to explain, but she was bending over the wound. ‘So what’s changed?’

‘They know God sent you to save them.’ She smiled at him.

The words seemed to slap at his face. She began to run the knife hard around the edge of the wound, leaving a thin trail of blood welting behind the sharp blade.

‘Listen, lady –’ Swanson started to say, before the pain slammed him upside of his head and he went unconscious.

It was late evening when Swanson awoke. The hurt in his leg was awful. His vision was fuzzy and he couldn’t focus on the white bandage made from a woman’s undergarment, but he didn’t need to see it to know the leg beneath the wrapping hurt as if she’d driven a wooden stake into his thigh. When his eyes finally focused, he saw a younger nun with a pudgy, cherub-like face kneeling in front of him looking concerned. She was maybe twenty. She smiled a gentle smile that filled something up inside him.

‘I’m Sister Martha. Would you like some water?’ He didn’t want any. She turned her head and called softly, ‘Sister St Agnes, he’s awake.’

The old nun came and stood over him. ‘Good. God would have never forgiven me if you’d died.’ Her eyes were laughing good-naturedly.

‘What did you do to my leg?’ He was fighting back a moan struggling out of the depth of him.

‘It was dirty. I cut the flesh away and opened it up inside and took the bullet out.’ She was walking back towards a small campfire of burning mesquite in the centre of the enclosed ground. ‘It will heal now.’

It took Swanson a few minutes to regain his bearings and to remember where he was. The younger nun continued to watch him until he returned her stare, then she averted her eyes shyly. His thoughts were on the old nun; this woman who moaned and prayed over the deaths of savages – savages who were out to kill them – but who cut his leg to pieces as casually as if she were cleaning chickens. She didn’t figure so easy. He watched the flickering light from the campfire for a few minutes, thinking about her, before he realized what was bothering him. He jumped.

‘Lady, put that out!’ he yelled, rolling toward the fire.

The two nuns caught him gently by the shoulders. He felt weak. ‘Don’t,’ the old one said, ‘you’ll hurt yourself and you’ll scare the children.’

‘Scare the children, hell.’ His voice was rising. ‘You’re going to get yourself and them killed with that fire.’

‘I insist you do not swear in front of the children,’ she said, turning back to the fire. ‘They have to eat. As soon as the meal is finished, I’ll put the fire out. Thank you for your concern.’

Swanson was holding himself up with one arm, staring at the back of the woman’s black robes as she worked over the campfire. He couldn’t believe her, she was crazy. He realized that the younger nun, Sister Martha, was still supporting his shoulder. As he started to pull away, pain tore through his leg and he caught himself.

‘Are you all right?’ the young nun asked.

‘I’m okay,’ he mumbled, crawling back to the wagons. He picked up the Hawken and scanned the darkening shadows of the canyon. His leg was driving him crazy with pain but he forced himself to think about the Apaches. He couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but he knew that meant nothing. The Mimbres were desert mountain people. They could lie in ambush a yard from a man in barren sand and not be discovered until it was too late. The only chance he had of spotting one was to study the road and the canyon until he had committed every bush, every rock, every patch of colour to memory, and then to wait for some small change. His thoughts were distracted by the sounds of cooking.