Edge: Apache Death

The squaws worked with skill and in silence and even in her trancelike condition Lorna was able to realize that their care was having a beneficial effect, for the Englishman, stretched out on the crude settle, began to breath more regularly and his face grew, less haggard and gained some color. A gentle bathing of his brow with warm water finally revived him.

He awoke to find himself naked above the waist and saw his shoulder was padded with a leaf dressing and felt that his head was also expertly bound with a crude bandage. He glanced around him, grimacing with pain, but able to force a smile at the two squaws, who answered him with vacant stares. Then he saw Lorna and raised his hand in a weak gesture of greeting.

"So I wasn't dreaming," he said, his voice still accented by a croak which detracted from his cultured tones. Her expression was no more friendly than that of the squaws.

"Don't you speak English, my dear?" he tried.

She moved her head in an almost imperceptible nod and he gritted against his pain to try to broaden his smile.

But when he attempted to raise himself into a sitting position one of the squaws forced him to lie down again. She did not have to exert very great effort. "Are you their prisoner, too?"

Again the slight movement of her lovely head encouraged the Englishman. "How long?"

Now she shook her head and he sighed.

"I suppose I'm for the high jump?" A quizzical expression caused him to amplify the remark. "They're only building, me up to knock me down. They'll kill me?"

She lifted her shoulders in a shrug and the movement raised the bodice of the unattractive smock to indicate the fullness of her breasts, unfettered beneath the drab material. The Englishman smiled his appreciation.

"I can see why the boss collared you for himself," he said.

"Aren't you afraid to die?" she said suddenly and seemed to be surprised by the sound of her own voice. They were the first words she had spoken since leaving the farm.

"It talks as well as walks," the Englishman answered, and adjusted his expression into one of sympathetic interest. "What's your name, my dear?"

"Lorna Fawcett," she told him, taking a step nearer to where he was lying. "They will kill you."

While one of the squaws stared hatred at Lorna, the other went to the flap and babbled in her native tongue.

"Don't you have' any influence with the big man?" For the first time there was a note of fear in the Englishman's voice and his smile was suddenly ragged at the edge. He sighed. "I suppose not—except flat on your back with your legs open. No use to me."

"I'm not here from choice," she told him. "They killed my family."

The flap was drawn aside and Cochise glowered into the tepee.

"We've all got our problems," the Englishman rasped as Lorna scuttled back against the hide wall.

Cochise regarded the Englishman in stony silence for several moments, then barked a command which sent the remaining squaw scuttling past him out of the tepee. Immediately, two braves rushed in, grasped the Englishman by his arm pits and dragged him off the settle and toward the flap. Cochise stepped aside and they pulled him outside. The chief turned to follow them, hesitated, then gestured with his head for Lorna to accompany him. She went, meekly, feeling the first stirring of human emotion since her ordeal had begun—trepidation not for herself but for the fate of the Englishman. And this turned to horror as she saw what the braves were doing to their prisoner.

The tepees of the camp had been set up in a circular pattern, with a broad open space at the center, surrounded by those of Cochise, his brother and other subchiefs and the shaman. In the middle of this space the two braves who had removed the Englishman from the tepee were staking out the prisoner, tying his hands and feet to four lances which had been driven into the ground at such a distance that his limbs were stretched to their extremes. The other members of the tribe were formed into two lines, facing the prisoner on each side, with a space left vacant at the center of one line to allow Cochise and his white squaw to view the proceedings. The chief sank into a cross-legged posture on the ground and gestured for Lorna to do likewise. But she was looking at the Englishman, whose face and naked upper body glistened with sweat from fear and the effort of trying to struggle against the tightly-knotted restraining ropes. Angered by the woman's non-compliance with his command Cochise chopped her viciously across the back of her knees and she sat down hard with a cry of pain. The rest of the watchers sank to the ground then, their brown faces showing varying degrees of eager anticipation for the entertainment to come.