The Darkest Heart by Brenda Joyce

The camp echoed with distressed wailing and keening, an eerie, distinctly Apache sound of mourning. Jack stumbled away. With his knife, as was the custom, he chopped his near-shoulder-length hair as short as possible. The tears flowed easily but silently—he couldn’t make the noises that wanted to rack his body with grief.
    As soon as Nalee was prepared, she and as many of her personal possessions as possible were placed on her favorite horse, and the burial party, consisting of Jack, Shozkay, and two of their male cousins, set out. She was buried in a deep crevice far from the campsite—which would now be moved, because of her death—along with most of her possessions, including a beautiful hunting knife with a turquoise-encrusted handle mat Jack had made for her. The grave was filled in, her horse killed, and the rest of her possessions scattered about the gravesite. By the time they had returned to the camp, the sun had been up for several hours.
    Jack wandered down to a running creek. The water wasicy cold but he didn’t care; his grief had numbed him. He stripped off his buckskins.
    He bathed in the creek mindlessly. His sadness would not lessen. Nalee was joining her husband in the afterlife all Apache believed in. Jack believed in it too, but he wanted her back. He stepped out of the creek, then tensed. There was someone in the shadows of the pinyon trees. His gun lay on the ground by the heap of his buckskins. Suddenly, without warning, he darted one hand out and grabbed the intruder.
    It was Datiye, and she gasped in pain.
    Jack stared at her, still Holding her wrist. She had loosened her long, jet-black hair, and the sunlight danced from it. His grip relaxed. Her eyes searched his. She was one of the prettier squaws; she had Apache features—high cheekbones, deep-set eyes, a straight, slightly hooked nose. Her figure was almost perfect, long-legged and slim-hipped, with small but enticing breasts. She was Chilahe’s younger sister, and he had married her as was his duty almost a year after his first wife’s death.
    And he had divorced her when he left his people, so she would be free to remarry—to be cared for by another brave.
    Jack released her. “What are you doing here? You could get in big trouble if someone sees you here, watching me bathe.”
    “I don’t care,” she said softly. “You are grieving. I have come to take away the grief.”
    Jack turned away. “You can’t take away the grief, woman. No one can.” He bent for his clothes. When he straightened, he felt her soft buckskin-clad body against his back, her hands on his shoulders. He quickly turned to face her, removing her hands and pushing her away. “No.”
    “Please,” she breathed. “I waited a whole winter for you to return, and then I married. Now I am a widow. Let me love you. It will make you forget.”
    “I do not want to forget,” Jack snapped. “And the last thing I feel like doing now is making love.”
    Datiye’s mouth trembled. “I helped you to forget once, or have you forgotten? I want to be your woman.”
    Jack had pulled on his buckskin pants. He buckled the gunbelt with the solitary Colt. “I already have a woman,” he told her.
    “A white woman?” Her voice quavered with tears.
    “Yes,” Not that it was true. But this infatuation had gone on long enough. Even before he had married Chilahe, Datiye, who was only a year younger than her sister, had indicated to him that she was open to his attentions. He had not given them. When they were only children—boys and girls being taught together in the ways of the woods by Grandfather—she had always trailed after him in particular, and had begged him to teach her the strange language of the White Eyes. He had. When Chilahe had died, even after mourning, he had not wanted to wed Datiye, but it had been his duty to do so and provide for her family.
    Chilahe had been a good wife, a hard worker, and eager to please him in their bed of hides. He had married her