The Wildest Heart (15 page)

“For
you,
perhaps, but not for me! I know this country. I've ridden here since I was a child. And besides, I always carry a gun with me. See?”

She pulled up her skirt, revealing a small derringer strapped against her thigh. “So now you can see that I can take care of myself. I hope you can. Or are you afraid to go on alone?”

“Now that you've assured me how safe it is, why should I be?” I retorted, adding, “Thank you for bringing me this far.”

“I only did it to get you away from Pa!” What a child she was in some ways! Shrugging, I watched her whirl the mare around and touch her spurs to her side. She did not bother to look back.

Suddenly I found myself in no great hurry to be on my way. I was alone, this was
my
land. Why should I worry?

I sat on my horse, looking down the slope. There was no danger here. It suddenly seemed quite preposterous, and realizing this, I felt my spirits lift. It was time for me to cast off my feeling of lethargy and begin to learn more about my inheritance. I'd show Todd Shannon that I wasn't helpless.

A small puff of breeze fanned loose tendrils of hair against my face, bringing with it the faint smell of dust and aromatic brush, and just as I was about to guide my mount forward, something—some tiny movement at the corner of my eye—made me turn my head. Had I really been afraid for a moment? It was only a thin strip of red material fluttering from a cactus spine. Some unwary ranch hand had ridden too close to that enormous, Y-shaped cactus and had snagged his shirt, or perhaps his neckerchief. Whoever it was certainly had loud tastes! The red was so bright that the tiny piece of material showed up plainly against the dull green of the cactus.

Idly, as I rode past, I reached forward and tugged at it, frowning again. He had to be a tall man, whoever he was, for I'd had to reach upward. And the material was silk. A red silk shirt? I couldn't imagine a cowboy wearing either a silk neckerchief or a silk shirt. A woman, then? But who? And how had she managed to snag the material of her gown so high up?

In spite of the growing warmth of the day, I felt as if a chill wind had brushed me, and I was suddenly uneasy and anxious to be home. I pushed the little strip of cloth deep into the pocket of my borrowed riding skirt and tried to forget about it as I urged my horse forward.

If Jules and Marta were surprised to see me back so early, and alone, they hid it well enough, although Jules shook his head disapprovingly when I told him I hadn't bothered with an escort.

Remembering my manners, I sat down and wrote a short, formal note to Todd Shannon, apologizing for leaving so abruptly. He would understand my real reasons of course, but I felt less guilty, now that the conventions had been observed. Jules would take the note himself, along with the horse I had borrowed. And Todd Shannon, with his guests to see to, could hardly come chasing after me, even if his pride allowed him to do so. He would be angry, but he would learn that I would do as I pleased.

I wouldn't let Shannon spoil the rest of my day! I picked out two of my father's journals and took them with me to the cool, book-lined room that had been his study, sitting in my favorite chair by the window that overlooked the patio. Marta, hovering nearby, asked me solicitously if I would care for something cool to drink.

“You've already overfed me with that wonderful breakfast,” I said, smiling at her. Then, as a thought struck me, I pulled the tiny scrap of red silk from the pocket of my skirt.

“Marta, do you have any idea who this could belong to? I found it fluttering from that big saguaro cactus, where the trail forks. You know the place, don't you?”

I saw her face change, and grow quite pale. “Ah—
Madre de Dios!
After all these years! It was the signal they used…”

“Who? Marta, you're not talking sense! For goodness' sakes, you've done nothing but talk in riddles lately!” Her mouth was working, as she continued to stare at the piece of material I still held between my fingers. “He's back then. Ah, did I not say so? I knew it. She is here. It was the signal they used, so long ago, when they thought it was safe for them to meet. Did I not warn him of the danger? ‘He'll end up killing you,' I said. ‘Stick to your own kind.' But he wouldn't listen. ‘We want each other,' he told me. ‘One day, Marta, I'm going to take everything that Shannon calls his!' And then he would tease me into giving him a piece of my old red petticoat, the one the patron gave me when Jules and I were married.”

I interrupted her sharply.

“Luke Cord! Is
that
who you mean? Look at me, Marta. I must know the truth. Do you mean that he left that piece of silk there as a signal to Flo Jeffords? That…”

Of course. Why need I ask? She had seen it, of course. That accounted for her sudden change of mood, her sudden decision to leave me. Silly, reckless Flo. But I blamed
him
even more. How dared he return and deliberately, defiantly, leave their old trysting signal on
my
land? Had she known all the time that he was back?

Marta was nodding, miserably.

“Si, señorita, there can be no other explanation. When she came back, I told Jules, ‘No good can come of this.' She came here, asking if we had seen
him
. It was before you came. Jules and I, we both hoped…”

“No one is blaming
you
,”
I said, more gently. “But Marta, don't you see? I must know what is going on. If Mr. Shannon should ever find out, the whole ugly business could start up again. And what is more, I'd be involved in it too.” My lips tightened. “Lucas Cord! I'd turn him over to the law myself, if I ever found him on my land!”

But Marta, it seemed, had a sneaking fondness for Luke. She looked at me with apprehension in her round face. “Señorita! Surely you would not? He is not all bad, that one. Wild, yes, but not evil. Your father used to say so. It was not all his fault. I remember when he would have nothing to do with her, that blonde one, and she would not leave him alone.”

“It seems to be the other way around this time, doesn't it?” I said coldly.

I decided that I would have to speak to Flo. Whether she hated me all the more for it or not, I would say what I had to say. And as for Luke Cord, when Mr. Bragg finally decided to show up,
he
would know how to deal with the matter, I was sure.

Having shooed Marta back to the kitchen, I turned to my father's journals, frowning. How could he possibly have taken such a liking to such a wild and reckless person as this Luke Cord appeared to be? Apparently the years and his imprisonment hadn't changed him. It seemed to me that he deliberately courted trouble.

I was supposed to read the journals in order, but I flipped through the closely written pages, putting aside one volume to take another from the desk until I found the entries I was interested in.

Brought Lucas back to the house with me today. Elena's son, who might have been mine. It is difficult to communicate with him, but I think he has begun to trust me. He knows that I loved his mother, and that alone forms a kind of bond between us. He adores her. The only times I have seen his face soften is when he speaks of her. He says she is still young-looking, still as beautiful as ever…

So my father's quixotic action
had
been for this mysterious Elena's sake, after all! I skimmed through various entries, turning the pages quickly.

I have turned professor! We started by playing chess together, and now I am teaching Lucas the rudiments of reading and writing. I was horrified when I discovered he could do neither, but what, after all, should I have expected? He was brought up to be an Apache warrior. He tells me that he learned to draw and fire a gun accurately before he was ten years old. This knowledge, of course, came from his wanderings with the comancheros.

A few pages further on, I read:

I had not realized how lonely I was before. It is good to have the companionship of someone young, and eager to learn; although I fear that Lucas's thirst for knowledge is in part motivated by his burning desire to be revenged, ultimately, upon my partner. He is all Apache in this respect, although he seems to want to adjust to living as a white man in a white man's world. Such stupid discrimination! If the color of one's skin was all that mattered, Lucas would not be taken for one-quarter Indian.

I have tried to talk philosophy to Lucas, but he is not yet ready for abstractions.

Lucas told me today that he fixed the shoe on Flo Shannon's horse. She was almost thrown while riding. It was on the tip of my tongue to warn him against seeing her again, but I kept silent. He would have looked at me with that cold, closed look that, thank God, he does not turn on me as often any longer. He would have thought I had spoken only because of his Indian blood…

My eyes, skimming impatiently over yellowing entries, stopped suddenly.

I shall always blame myself for not having guessed what was happening. Marta and Jules both knew, but they confessed they were afraid to tell me. I was young once—why didn't I think? Flo Shannon, for all of her youth, is an empty-headed flirt. I have always thought so. Haven't I seen her make calf eyes at my cowhands?

God help me—I could almost wish he had not come back. But he has grown to trust me, and he had given his word. He came to tell me the truth, he said. I could see from the old, sullen look on his face that he knew what would happen. “White man's justice!” he said bitterly to me, and there was nothing I could say to refute it. Hate breeds hate. I tried to tell Todd that, but his own hatred has made him blind to everything else.

I have written to the commandant of Alcatraz prison. Perhaps it will help. For the first time, I am glad of the friends I have made through the years, and for the first time I will try to use whatever influence I have. It was not justice, but prejudice that sent Lucas Cord to jail for life…

Abruptly, I closed the leather-covered book. I would read no more for now. My father had believed in justice, he had believed Luke Cord's story. But Luke Cord was no longer a youth; he was a man. Bitter, hardened, and hating, no doubt, as hard as Todd Shannon did. Had my father been prejudiced in his favor merely because he was Elena's son? That small piece of red silk had ruined my whole day, and thrown me into the middle of an unpleasant, dangerous situation. My instincts told me that he was using Flo as an instrument of his revenge, and she, poor fool, was too vain to see it.

I thought grimly that I would dearly like to meet this Luke Cord, face to face, and tell him what I thought of him.

I went to bed early that night, still feeling confused and uneasy. Jules had returned from the
palacio
wearing a grim expression. He had handed my note personally to Todd Shannon, but the patron had barely glanced at it. From the subdued atmosphere and guarded faces of the SD hands, he had gathered that the patron was in an ugly mood. Had he said anything? Jules had shaken his grizzled head. Nothing at all. He had heard from one of the men that a fence had been cut and a few head of cattle were missing. No doubt that was what made everyone so preoccupied. Still, it sounded rather ominous, and I wondered if Luke Cord had had anything to do with the cut fence and the missing cattle. A ruse to keep Shannon and his men occupied while he kept a secret rendezvous with Flo?

I had half expected Mark to come, but even he stayed away, and in spite of my determination to have a talk with Flo I could hardly send Jules back to the big house again with a note for
her
this time. We were hardly friends, after all! In the end I realized that there was nothing I could do but to wait until the proper opportunity presented itself. And meanwhile, I was tired, both physically and mentally.

I ate at six, and by seven-thirty I was in bed, too tired and too lazy once I had pulled the covers up to climb out again and extinguish the small lamp I had left burning on my dressing table.

Never mind,
I remember thinking drowsily,
there's not
much oil left in it, and it will go out by itself…
and then I must have fallen asleep, too weary even to dream.

I could not remember, afterwards, what woke me, forcing my eyelids open. Some slight noise, perhaps? The brightness of light against my closed lids?

I remember thinking, still half-asleep, that the lamp had become brighter. But how could that be? It had been going out. How could it be that there was a strange man in my bedroom, leaning against the wall, watching me? It was he who had turned the lamp up.

He had seen my eyes open and widen, and he straightened unhurriedly, still watching me with a wary, brooding gaze. “No need to scream. I ain't here to do you no harm, but this was the only way I could get to see you alone. You awake enough to understand?”

He had a quiet, husky voice, with a note of urgency in it at the moment. Still blinking against the light, I thought irritably that he was not at all as I'd pictured him in my imagination.

I had not expected that he'd be tall, nor that his thick, dark hair would be shot through with bronze glints as it caught the light. I had thought his features would be flatter, darker, like the Mexican and Indian faces I had seen, but instead he had the straight nose of his Spanish ancestors, and a hard mouth that curved grimly, if rather mockingly, up at one corner when he became aware of my scrutiny.

“Well?” he said in the same husky voice, and I thought that secretly he was laughing at my stunned, stupefied expression.

I found my tongue at last. “Do I look like the screaming type?” I demanded tartly, sitting up in bed with the covers held closely against my shoulders.

“Not now,” he said, the sun wrinkles creasing at the corners of surprisingly hazel eyes, as he noticed my instinctive movement.

“Well, since we have that out of the way, suppose you tell me what you're doing in my bedroom in the middle of the night, Lucas Cord?”

“You been studyin' my wanted posters? Either that, or you're a good guesser.”

“I'm in no frame of mind to engage in pointless banter!” I exclaimed furiously. “I don't know how you got in here, but I'd thank you to say whatever you came to say and leave the same way!”

“Had the notion you might have somethin' you wanted to say to me.”

The creases appeared again. A deep groove etched itself in one cheek when his lips curled in a mocking, one-sided smile that did not reach his eyes. I suddenly had a feeling that he did not smile often. There were green flecks in his eyes, like tiny fires, and I was being ridiculous, staring at him as if I had never seen a man before.

“How did you…”

In the same soft voice, he said, “I watched you take that little strip of red silk. Knew you'd probably ask Marta about it.” He grimaced. “She has a long memory, that old woman! She told you, huh?”

He had been watching my face, and I suppose my expression gave me away. But his cool, impudent manner annoyed me, and I think he knew that, too. “I'm sorry,” he said, suddenly, running his fingers through his long hair. For a moment, his guard slipped, and something almost boyishly apologetic showed in those strange eyes of his. “Your pa always used to tell me I ought to learn better manners. As it turned out, I didn't get the chance to. Shouldn't have busted in here this way, but I guessed you suspected somethin', and so I—”

“Suspected! Do you take me for a complete idiot?” The memory of his assignation with Flo made me angry enough to interrupt him, completely forgetting to choose my words carefully. “I've learned enough about you to know very well what you were up to! And if Flo Jeffords is fool enough to be taken in, let me assure you
I
am not! What could you be thinking of? Are you trying to punish her for something that happened long ago, or is it revenge on Todd Shannon, even if it's indirect, that you hope to get?”

His face had hardened, lips thinning. And when his eyes narrowed I could see why people had said he had a dangerous look. Right now he looked lethal. His words were cold, thrown like stones in my face, although his tone was just as quiet, “What's Flo to you? Thought she was exaggerating, just like she always did, when she told me Shannon was sweet on you, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe he
has
gotten to you after all. Was your concern for Flo for his sake, Miss Dangerfield?”

I said through gritted teeth, “I don't care how much you and Todd Shannon hate each other. Yes, and you can kill each other, for all I care! But don't use someone else as an instrument for your revenge! Flo's an unhappy, confused young woman, and she doesn't need you to complicate her life further!”

I thought I saw a flicker of surprise in his eyes. “Why do you bother about her? Why, she don't even like you!”

“That makes no difference!” I said heatedly. “Can't you see that? If you have a quarrel with Todd Shannon, why don't you find him and face him like a man? Get it over and then maybe everyone else around here can live in peace!”

“You think it could ever be as easy as that?” His voice sounded bitter. “Christ—how little you know! I'd have faced Todd Shannon before, if I could have gotten close enough to him, but that ain't his way of doin' things. He put a price on my head—bounty money—same as he did to my pa. Why should he dirty his bullets on an Indian? That's Shannon's way. Let someone else do his dirty work for him. He almost killed my mother and had my father killed from ambush, the same way he'd like to see me killed, if I don't get to him first!” Lucas Cord took a step towards the bed, and then, swearing under his breath, he stopped. I sat there silently, watching him
pace like a caged animal to the far end of the room, and then back again to face me.

“Why don't you go away, then? You're young enough to make a new life for yourself, to make a new start. Why did you have to come back? In time Shannon would forget about you. He'd forget…”

“He ain't the type to forget anythin'!” Those hazel cat's eyes stared angrily into mine. “An' neither am I, come down to it. Shannon stole most of the lands he claims as SD property from my pa and by rights it should belong to my mother! But they said Alejandro Kordes was an outlaw, because he kept fightin' for somethin' he believed in. Said all the records, the grant deeds datin' all the way back to the Spanish king had been lost or destroyed in the war. Some people remembered that the Kordes family had called this land theirs for years and years before the goddamn Anglo came to steal it, an' Shannon got around that by sayin' he married a Kordes. That any claim to the land was hers, as passed through her to him. You askin' me to forget all that? Or the time I was railroaded to that hellhole island they called a jail? Or the times I bin shot at by Shannon's hired bounty killers?”

“You're as full of hate as
he
is!” I said accusingly. “You'd use any methods you can think of to get back at Todd Shannon, wouldn't you?”

“An' if I did, what's it to you?”

I tried to keep my voice even. “You're here to start a war. It
was
you who cut that fence, wasn't it? But why? Why now?”

“Maybe I wanted to get Shannon's mind off his new partner.” The curiously husky quality of his voice was even more apparent when he lowered it.

I stared uncomprehendingly at him. “For heaven's sake! You didn't know anything about me. I can't see the point in any of your actions!”

“Seems to me, whether you realize it yet or not, that
you're
the key to settlin' things once an' for all. Your own pa saw it, only he didn't get the chance to talk to you, like he'd hoped.”

“I?” My voice had risen, and I bit my lip. “I'm afraid you're talking in riddles. What have I got to do with any of this? I've been here less than a month and all I know about this feud that seems to be so important to all of you is that it began a very long time ago and should be over and forgotten by now. And what little I have been told came to me secondhand. How can you say that I can settle matters?”

He was rubbing the heel of his hand abstractedly over a beard-stubbled jaw while he studied me, and I had the impression that he was judging me in some way; trying to gauge my reactions to his next statement.

In that instant when we stared measuringly at each other, I defiantly and he thoughtfully, I found myself comparing him to Todd Shannon. Lucas Cord wore faded jeans, with knee-high Indian moccasins. His shirt, which had once been blue was equally faded, and open at the throat. Instead of the string tie that Todd invariably wore, this man wore a carelessly knotted red bandanna. What gave him the right to sneak into my bedroom at night, like a thief? What had he meant when he said curtly that I was the key to ending the feud? Worst of all, it was ridiculous that I should be sitting here, with my bedcovers drawn up to my neck like a frightened virgin, actually conversing with the man!

I think he must have read something in my face that made him change his mind about what he had been going to say to me. “You ain't ready to listen yet, are you? Right now you're mad at me for bein' here.”

He said it flatly, without expression, and I found myself wondering if
this
was what my father had meant when he referred to Luke's “sullen, closed look.”

“You can hardly blame me for it, can you?” I said coldly, and saw him shrug.

“I guess not. But it was the only way I could think of to get to see you without Shannon's men findin' out.” He gave me a twisted kind of smile. “Left my horse some distance off. Walked the rest of the way. I learned to walk an' run for whole days at a time when I lived with the Apaches. A man on foot, who knows where he's goin' and what he's doin' can hardly be spotted—especially not at night.”

I looked at him haughtily, mostly to cover my self-consciousness at my state of dishabille. “You certainly have strange notions of the way to pay a call on a lady you don't even know!” I said scathingly, and again one corner of his mouth lifted in a mocking smile.

“Ain't hardly a gentleman, am I? Did you expect me to come callin' all formal like Mark Shannon does? Or send you an invitation to dinner like his uncle? My brother Ramon, now, he'd know how to go about it the right way. He's the educated one of the family. Me, I'm here partly because you cottoned onto that sign I left for Flo. Mostly because that Pinkerton man told me you was here, and I should talk to you.”

“Mr. Bragg? What has Mr. Bragg got to do with your coming here?”

He shrugged again.

“Elmer Bragg is an old fox. But he ain't stupid-old yet. I was in Mexico when he tracked me down. You might say I was kinda anxious to leave, at the time.” The cleft in his cheek deepened, and I had the impression he was laughing at himself. “Pinkerton man can be mighty persuasive when he holds all the aces. So here I am.”

I eyed him narrowly. “You're talking riddles again. You came here to meet Flo.”

“An' you're talkin' like the prosecutor at my trial. Already had me guilty an' hung before I got tried.”

I found that I already disliked Lucas Cord immensely.

“But you left that signal for her. You saw her.”

“Why not? We had things to talk about. Nothin' to do with you.”

“You're insolent…”

“That mean I don't show the proper respect? I sure am sorry. From knowin' your pa, I expected a warm, generous woman. Thought you might take after him. He used to talk about you a lot, about how he hoped you'd grow up. But then, he was the kind of man who saw the good in everyone. It's a shame he didn't get to meet you.”

He looked at me with as much dislike as I felt for him, and this made me angrier than ever.

“This discussion is getting us nowhere. I think you had better leave the way you came.”

“Sure. An' if I were you I'd get it nailed up. Might have visitors who ain't as backward as I am, seein' you in bed an' all.”

He was tall enough to reach the trapdoor leading to the roof that I had completely forgotten about.

It was only after he had gone, catlike and silent, that I remembered we had not settled anything at all. I had not even found out why he had come to see me.

Hardly thinking of what I was doing, I jumped out of bed, seizing my robe from its peg on the door. He couldn't have gone far. I pushed open the door that led out onto the patio.

“Lucas? Luke Cord, where are you?” I hissed, and heard only silence.