The Wildest Heart (24 page)

“You…!”

“I ain't quite finished yet. Didn't take your clothes off because I wanted you, just to show you what I
could
do, if I'd a mind to! An' that gown you was wearin' was hardly suitable for a squaw. I'll get you some others tomorrow, an' you start learnin' your place.”

He rolled away from me and stood up, all in one easy motion. With a short, disgusted exclamation he flung me a blanket.

“Keep that around you an' try to get some sleep. Ain't gonna tie you, because there's no place you can go. Adios for now.”

I was left shivering with shock, clutching the blanket to my shaking body as I watched him stride away towards the other fires without a backward glance.

In spite of the bitterness of my emotions, I must have fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion. I was so weary that I only half-awoke when Lucas Cord came back to the crude little lean-to and lay beside me. I turned onto my stomach with a muffled exclamation, pulling the blanket more closely around myself, but he made no move to touch me and, shockingly, I slept again.

By the time I had spent two days in the Apache camp I had managed to regain some remnants of my pride and common sense. It was not as if I had any choice in the matter. I was a captive, a slave, but I was in a much better position than any of the other miserable wretches who had been taken prisoner by the Apache. I was neither continually beaten, nor left to sleep out in the open like one of the dogs. I was not literally worked to death, nor tormented by both the women and the children of the camp.

I wasn't Lucas Cord's wife, although he came to lie by me every night, in the small wickiup that Little Bird, his brother's wife, had helped me build. I was not his mistress, although I think that only he and I knew that. He had made it clear that as a woman I held no attraction for him. I learned soon enough that I was merely an instrument of his revenge against Todd Shannon, and that by becoming engaged to the man he hated, I had made myself his enemy too. I was to be a pawn of some kind, but he would tell me nothing beyond the mocking statement he had thrown out that first morning, when he woke me by flinging a blouse and skirt at me. They were typical of the garments that all the Apache women wore. And apparently that was all they wore!

“What do you mean to do with me?” I had demanded. “I have a right to know!”

I was sitting up, clutching the blanket closely around myself, and his eyes seemed to strip me of its protection.

“Guess that's up to you,” he drawled, in his infuriatingly husky voice. “Got a few days' business left around here, an' then I'm going home to visit my family. Now
you
,”
and his voice had hardened, “can choose whether you're goin' as a guest, or a servant. Always did promise my mother a white woman for a servant. She thought a lot of your pa, same as I did, but seein' as you've let Todd Shannon convince you we're all thieves an' murderers…”

“My father saved your life!” I flung at him. “And he saved your mother's life! Doesn't that mean anything to you?”

“You beggin' me to let you go for Todd Shannon's sake, or your pa's, or your own? You remindin' me of a debt I owe? Well, I owed that debt to Mr. Guy Dangerfield. I thought his daughter would be more like him, but you ain't. You're whatever they made you—your grandfather, your ma—that fine London society. Came to New Mexico to visit, didn't you? See how the natives live. You didn't care to see under the surface they showed you…” He broke off, his face dark with suppressed anger. “Ah, shit! What's the point? You're lookin' at me, hatin' me, and you don't see any further than that. Well, you got your choice. We'll talk about the rest later.”

He talked of offering me a choice, but for the time being, I
had
no choice. After that one occasion Lucas Cord hardly spoke to me, except to give some order. I felt he was only waiting for me to rebel, to disobey, or perhaps to throw something at him; I would not give him the satisfaction of having an excuse to beat me in front of the whole camp, nor to prove to me all over again how ambiguous my position here was. I compressed my lips and did what I was told, although I knew he realized I was being sarcastic on occasion.

Little Bird, who was Julio's wife and the daughter of a chief, was hardly communicative, although she spoke some Spanish. I suppose my position puzzled her too.

She showed me how a wickiup was built, and which roots and herbs to gather. I was taught how to tan a hide and how to light a fire, how to cook food their way. I learned, and I did as I was told.

The Apache society was an example of society in the Middle Ages. The men, all-powerful, were warriors; the women were subservient and did all the work. A warrior went out hunting or raiding, and saw to his weapons himself. His woman saw to everything else. As in every other primitive society, there were taboos. A man must not look on the face of his mother-in-law, or converse with her. A man usually lived with his wife's family. A woman never spoke out in the presence of males, unless she was asked for her opinion.

I saw Jewel on a couple of occasions, but at a distance. I learned that she had been bought by the
comanchero
Delgado. She still wore the ragged remnants of the garments she had worn when we were first captured, and she did not seem too unhappy, although she was subdued and silent, just as I was.

When Lucas went out on a hunting trip with the men on the second day, he dressed just as they did, in a breechclout with knee-high moccasins. I noticed that they carried a bow and arrows as well as rifles.

I hated him. What had he meant by saying I might be a guest or a servant when he went to visit his family? When would he leave the camp? There were times when I wondered what the reactions of my friends might have been, when they learned what had happened.

Poor Mark! How he must blame himself! And Mrs. Poynter and the colonel. Much worse, when Todd found out what had happened. He would blame everyone else, of course. But I lived in the present, because I had to. I would not speak unless I had to. I looked down whenever there were males present.

It was not too difficult to adapt; I had adapted before to more hostile environments. My put-on meekness of manner was exaggerated, and Lucas Cord knew it. When Little Bird was not present I saw his brother look at me, and I could sense that he still wanted me. Good, I thought. It might be another weapon I could use against Lucas Cord. Perhaps, for money, Julio would set me free.

Two weeks passed—and a third. Only the trained, controlled strength of my mind, my will, enabled me to remain submissive and calm on the surface. I would not be conquered. He had a reason for “rescuing” me. I would find it out and use it against him.

I found out we were to leave in the morning when Little Bird instructed me on preparations for the long journey. As usual, she would not say more than was necessary, but I received the impression that she was no more eager than I to embark on this particular trip. She and Julio and their two small children, a girl and a boy, still strapped to his cradleboard, would accompany us. We would have to cross the Jornado del Muerto again, I gathered, from the quantity of water we would have to carry with us. We would skirt the Canada de Alamosa, the centuries-old home of the Eastern Chiricahua Apaches, and travel from there to the Black Range.

Was that where this mysterious secret valley was located? She would not give me a direct answer, but turned her head away. I had the impression there was something she would have liked to tell me, but her respect for her husband and his brother prevented her from doing so.

We were to take mules as well as horses, the former loaded down with silver. The Apaches knew its value, I had learned, but only vaguely. They would trade the silver and gold they stole for rifles and ammunition, bolts of cloth and trinkets, cooking pots and tools, things of more tangible value to them. The
comancheros,
who knew the real value of the precious metal, would trade for it and sell it in Mexico.

I had my only chance to speak with Jewel just before we left, when the mules and the horses were already loaded. I thought she looked wistful, as she stood some distance behind her new owner, and with a defiant glance at Lucas I went up to her.

“Jewel! I'm sorry I didn't get the chance to talk with you before. Are you all right? Do they treat you kindly?”

She shrugged. “Guess you know as well as I do how it is! But 'Gado ain't unkind, and he seems to like me. 'Least, he's been talkin' like he don't aim to get rid of me down in Mexico right away. Who knows?” She gave me a philosophical look. “He's not as bad as some ‘protectors' I've had. Don't beat on me an' give me to other men.” She gave me a surreptitious, hasty embrace. “It's you I bin worryin' about. You didn't seem like the type… but then he's young, ain't he? An' not half bad-looking. Be sensible, Rowena. Only way a female can survive is by bein' smarter than a man, an' learnin' how to roll with the punches.”

That was our farewell, for we had no chance to say any more to each other. Little Bird pulled me by the arm, and I caught Lucas Cord's strange, green-fired glance upon me. With the men leading the way, we left the small, concealed canyon on foot, leading the horses.

We traveled very slowly and cautiously, sometimes continuing our journey at night, although I could tell that Little Bird was terrified by this. Apaches would seldom travel at night, because they believed that evil spirits lurked abroad then, but Julio, in spite of all his Apache ways, was like his brother in scoffing at such superstition.

I learned that Little Bird was expecting another child, and although she never complained or fell back, it became clear to me that the long hours of walking with a baby strapped to her back were a strain on her. I offered to carry the child myself, and though she glanced at me gratefully, her look was strange. The little girl rode on one of the horses, her small face solemn and unsmiling. The baby, like most Apache infants, never cried.

His name was Coyote Walking, and he had round, curious black eyes and a fringe of straight black hair. I would think he was watching me sometimes, and wonder if he would grow up like his uncles. Still, he was an infant, and although I had never been able to feel anything more than awkwardness around children, I grew fond of him, and of the little girl too.

Sometimes I would feel Lucas Cord's eyes on me, never giving anything away, and sometimes Julio's. What had Lucas told him of me? What did he think? I would not, I had willed myself not to think. It was easier that way, when we had to trudge what seemed endless miles across burning white sands in order not to overtax the horses, and then set up camp at the end of it, while the men rested. It was easier to keep my mind a blank and my body rigid and unyielding when Lucas came to lie by me at night. We did not talk at such times, and invariably he turned his back on me. Sometimes I thought Little Bird looked at me in a puzzled and almost pitying way, although she never said anything. She was kind to me, and spoke enough Spanish to make herself understood. She tried to teach me the Apache words for various objects, although I found it difficult to master the guttural sounds they used.

Lucas Cord was still a stranger to me. There were times when I felt a stranger to myself. I was on an arduous, ridiculous journey—the hunted now, instead of being on the side of the hunter. I knew there had to be other people not too far away. White settlers, soldiers. Surely Todd would have had half the territory out searching for me? And yet we saw no one until we had reached the foothills that reached up hungrily, it seemed, toward those towering peaks and ridges that formed the Black Range, legendary hideout of the Apaches.

Little Bird seemed almost animated when we entered an Apache
ranchería.
Her father, who was a relative of Victorio himself, lived here. We were enveloped by her family. Only her mother, out of politeness, carefully hid herself from her son-in-law. I realized again that the Apaches loved children as little Coyote Walking and his sister were immediately surrounded by affectionate, admiring relatives. I received many veiled, curious glances, but with the innate politeness that the Apaches displayed to guests, no one asked any questions, nor did my presence meet with any disapproval. Little Bird, in her own environment, went out of her way to make me feel welcome, and the only awkward moment I had was when the medicine man of the tribe, an extremely old man with lank gray hair escaping from under his ceremonial headdress, fixed his eyes sharply upon me, where I sat discreetly in the shadows with the other women.

I know he asked Lucas something, and the answer he received made him look at me even more penetratingly, although he did not say a word to me at the time. We were to spend a night here, and I remember feeling relieved at the prospect. The site of the
ranchería
was beautiful. A tiny plateau, protected on three sides by steep cliffs, it was high enough to be richly green, shaded by pine and aspen trees. A small stream, gushing down like a miniature waterfall from the cliff, ran through the center of it. It had been the home of the Apaches for a long time, although Little Bird told me, in a moment of rare confidence, that they had to move away in the winter, the time they called Ghost Face. Still they had planted corn here, and other herbs and shrubs they used for food. It might have been a pleasant, peaceful place if I did not remember that the war chief Victorio had stayed here on occasion, and from here bloody raids had been made on stagecoaches and unsuspecting white settlers.

But I told myself firmly that I would not think of that. I was here as a guest of sorts, and the Apaches on their home grounds were a different people from the Apache warriors who went to war with painted faces.

The men had gone to the ceremonial sweat lodge—a kind of Turkish bath—and late in the evening some of the women, Little Bird and I among them, went to bathe in a secluded, tree-shaded portion of the stream. I could almost have imagined we were in the bathing pool of the maharajah's harem at Jhanpur, from the giggling and teasing chatter. The women washed their hair with a form of soap they made from the yucca cactus, and combed it through with makeshift combs fashioned from bone or cactus spines.

My hair, as always, hung sleek and heavy when it was wet. I combed it with the comb that Little Bird loaned me, her manner more friendly than usual, and let it hang loose until it was dry, tying a narrow strip of buckskin around my forehead to keep the loose strands out of my eyes.

“Look in the still water,” Little Bird told me, and giggled. I had not looked in a mirror since I was captured, and my reflection in the small pool made me stare in disbelief. I could hardly recognize myself! I might have been an Apache woman, except for my blue eyes, and in the rapidly fading light even they looked dark. My skin had tanned in the sun and turned almost brown. I had stopped peeling from sunburn. In the high-necked, long-sleeved blouse of an Apache squaw, my hair parted in the center, I looked like a brown-skinned Amazon.

Where was the dowdy, frowning girl with spectacles tipped on her nose? Or the sophisticated woman with jewels sparkling around her throat and at her ears? I still wore my tiny sapphire ear studs, and somehow, taken with the rest of me, they looked incongruous. Impulsively I unscrewed them and handed them to Little Bird.

“A gift,” I said in Spanish. “Because you have been kind.”

For a moment she seemed confused, staring from the small, sparkling jewels I held in the palm of my hand, to my face. And then she took them, her face solemn and touched my hand.

“Gracias,”
she said in Spanish, and then in Apache, in a softer voice,
“nidee,”
which I had learned meant sister. At that moment, we were close to being friends.

It was a pity that Lucas had to spoil the moment. He came striding towards us, his chest bare except for the small buckskin pouch that hung suspended from a rawhide cord around his neck—the medicine pouch that every Apache warrior carried with him. And why not, since he was obviously proud of his Apache blood? His wet hair glistened in the dim light, and his face was closed and unreadable. “The shaman wishes to speak with you.” Little Bird had dropped back unobtrusively, and his fingers closed around my wrist.

“Show some respect. He is an old man, but very wise. “My—” and I wondered why he hesitated before he went on, “my grandfather.”

“I have always respected those who have earned respect.” I tilted my head back and my eyes met his. “Do you think I would embarrass you?”

“How do I know what to expect of you?” His words were almost muttered, with a kind of frustration underlying them. “You're a most unexpected woman!”

“I'm adaptable,” I said coolly, moving my wrist from his grasp. “I'm patient too. And I know my place. Shouldn't I walk a few paces behind you? My head meekly bowed, of course. I know you would not want anyone to think you had allowed your slave any extra privileges!”

I had the satisfaction of seeing him scowl down at me, his eyes puzzled. But “Watch your tongue…” was all he said to me before he turned and walked ahead of me toward the largest wickiup in the encampment.

I was horribly nervous, although I would have died rather than show it. Why did the shaman wish to speak to me? I could not understand my nervousness either. I had been presented to the Queen of England and had sailed through the whole performance without a suggestion of butterflies in my stomach! But this was not England, and as preposterous as it would have seemed to me less than a month ago, I was the prisoner of a man I despised and distrusted.

“Don't speak first,” Lucas instructed me before we entered the conical-shaped brush dwelling. “Try to sit quietly without fidgeting until you're spoken to.”

I could not resist letting a flash of sarcasm show in my tone. “Thank you for instructing me in the proper etiquette! Your slave will try not to disgrace you.”

He gave me one of his brooding, expressionless glances that seemed to warn me I was going too far, but he said nothing and, bending his head, he preceded me into the gloomy, firelit interior.

The old shaman seemed half asleep as we seated ourselves on either side of the doorway. For some time he neither moved nor acknowledged our presence. A fat woman who appeared to be much younger than he moved quietly about her duties in the background. His daughter? His wife? Were shamans allowed to marry? He had discarded the ceremonial buckskin headdress decorated with eagle and turkey feathers and now wore only the usual headband of an Apache warrior. His brown face seemed to be composed of seams and wrinkles, and he might have been a hundred years old. “My grandfather,” Lucas Cord had said, with that odd, tiny hesitation. Was it possible that this was Elena Kordes's father? The Apache chief who had made a young Spanish woman captive his wife?

I studied the old man from beneath my lowered lashes, and after a short time I received the distinct impression that he was doing the same thing.

“So—you are the one.” The words, spoken in rusty Spanish, were uttered so suddenly that I almost jumped. The old fox! So he
had
been watching me after all. I raised my eyes to his half-open ones, but did not speak. He had made a statement; what was there to say?

We regarded each other, and after a few seconds had passed the old man's eyes opened fully. He looked at Lucas, I thought. It was difficult to tell, with the fire between us.

“Does she speak, or is she afraid to do so?”

I compressed my lips together as Lucas answered him, his tone caustic.

“She speaks too much sometimes, oh my grandfather. And I do not think she is afraid.”

The old man was nodding, turning his eyes back to me. “That is good. You do not have the look of a woman who is afraid. Sometimes my grandson is not as wise as he thinks he is. When I first saw you, the thought came to me—this is one of the rare women who listens, and observes; and learns what from she sees. I have seen for myself how quickly you have learned our ways. I told myself, perhaps the mind and the heart of this woman are as open and honest as were those of her father, who came one day to this camp alone, with no fear, because, he said, he would understand the Apache.” The old man nodded again, as if it pleased him to turn his thoughts backwards. “Your father was the only white man I have called
siqiàsn
—brother. And as long as he lived he was a true blood brother to the Apache.” The old, rheumy eyes seemed to search my face, “You understand now why I have called you here?” I did not understand—not yet, not quite. But my father, blood brother to the same savage, merciless Indians who had attacked the stagecoach, murdered and tortured, and then had carried
me
off?

I could see that the shaman expected me to answer him. I could think of nothing to say except, shaking my head, “No, I am not certain if I understand or not. Did you know who I was then? From the beginning?”

“Ah, ah!” Sitting cross-legged, the old man began to rock very slightly back and forth, as if it helped him to think. “Now I have made you curious. That is good. Your curiosity will make you speak out and ask questions, where before you were doubtful, you wondered, why has this old man sent for me? What kind of things will he ask me? You are your father's daughter, his only child from across the great water. That is why you are here.” He paused and I leaned forward, but he raised one hand in a somehow imperious gesture.

“I see many questions in your eyes, but you will ask them later, those that I have not already answered. You are wondering if the warriors who first brought you as a captive to their camp were sent to look for you. No. It was a raiding party. For many days the young men had watched the coach go by and they learned how many soldiers usually guarded it, how many guns they carried. Sometimes the tracks left by the wheels were deeper than on other days. They knew that on such days silver was carried in a box hidden at the back. My daughter, it was by chance you were on the coach our young warriors captured. Or perhaps it was one of those things that was meant to happen, who knows?” His eyes turned for a moment on Lucas, sitting silent and cross-legged; his face still without expression.

“Perhaps it was also meant to happen that on the very day you were brought into the camp where my other grandson is subchief,
this
one happened to be there, and knew who you were. He brought you here first, as I would have wanted him to.”

First?
They were all talking in riddles, Lucas and his brother Ramon—now this old man. I had not been told what was expected of me. Why it was necessary for me to be brought here under such humiliating conditions!

Etiquette or no, it was impossible for me to sit silently for a moment longer. I cast an angry glance at Lucas Cord, and I thought one eyebrow lifted a fraction, as though he warned me to silence, or challenged me to speak. Well, I would speak out, whether he liked it or not.

“You have something to say, and the words are bursting from your throat.” Perhaps the shaman practiced mind reading.

“Yes!” I burst out, trying to keep some of the anger I had suppressed for so long out of my voice. “I would like to know why I was brought here, and where I am being taken.
He
,” and I poured all the contempt I could muster into my voice, “would tell me nothing at all, except that I could choose being his mother's guest or her servant! And what is more, he's used me despicably, threatened me, made me slave for him—just as if I'd done him some injury, or my father hadn't saved his miserable life!
You
have just said my father was like a brother to you, and you've spoken to me as if I was a guest, but
he
…”