The Wildest Heart (26 page)

Had I really walked all day? A week ago it would have seemed impossible. And yet we had only stopped a few times to rest the horses, and to snatch a quick meal of the pemmican-like paste that Little Bird had gone to such pains to show me how to prepare.

When we made camp for the night the sun had barely dropped behind the nearest ridge. The men found a small cave, scooped out in the side of a towering cliff, which would provide both shelter and protection from any predators. There were no brush shelters erected tonight; only a scooped out hollow for a small, smokeless fire, and blankets spread out against the rocky walls. I had begun to imagine that Apache women were merely slaves to their husbands, but seeing the shy looks that were exchanged, and the whispered talk between husbands and wives, I began to see another side of their lives. The two young women and their men were like young lovers anywhere—not quite used to each other yet, still embarrassed to show their feelings in front of others.

As for myself, I felt as if I was acting a part. Rowena Dangerfield—Apache virgin. Shy, modest, self-effacing. Blushing bride-to-be. The thought made me grimace. You're getting cynical, I warned myself; be careful! And indeed I would have to be careful if I ever wanted to be free again. I could dismiss Ramon Kordes easily. In spite of his bold Latin gallantry, he was a young man, and, I was sure, I could appeal to his sense of chivalry. No, it was not Ramon who made me frown thoughtfully into the darkness as I lay huddled in my blankets, trying to keep my teeth from chattering in the cold night air. It was the thought of his mother, the formidable Elena Kordes who had started a blood feud; the woman Todd Shannon hated and my father had loved. Ruthless, arrogant, designing; the kind of woman who had brought her sons up to hate as much as she did, and did not hesitate to use them as instruments of her revenge. What kind of a woman would I find when we arrived in the secret valley? Instinct told me that we would be adversaries, that I must not underestimate either her power or her determination. If Todd's story was to be believed this was the same woman who, when she was a young girl, had had her own cousin and her cousin's child killed so that
she
could take her cousin's husband. The woman of whom even her own father had said, “She was a strong-willed woman with a mind.”

I turned uneasily, half-asleep. Tonight the men and the women slept separately, the men keeping watch in turns. The fire had been carefully extinguished, but I saw the dimly glowing red tip of a cigar, and smelled its odor, and knew which one of the men sat still and cross-legged just outside the small cave, his profile turned away from me.

Lucas Cord. The son who had made his mother's revenge his own. Was he too thinking of her? Half-remembered phrases flashed through my mind.

“He always did worship his mother… he adored her.”

What kind of a man was he underneath all the savagery? What kind of woman was she to have produced such a son? I tried to imagine what she would look like after so many years. She would be older, of course, with wrinkles in her face, her black hair turned gray in streaks, no longer the young, passionately beautiful girl she had been. Imagination blended almost imperceptibly into half-dreamed images, and then everything vanished as I slid into a deep, dreamless sleep.

As it turned out, Elena Kordes was not in the least as I had pictured her. But our first meeting did not take place at once. I had not expected the valley to be so large that it would take us almost four hours to cross it.

It took us a journey of almost five days after we had left the
ranchería
to reach a place of awesome grandeur, a mountaintop that seemed to jut out over another mountaintop. We had done nothing but climb to get here, and I felt myself ready to drop with weariness, although I knew better than to utter a murmur of protest. Lucas Cord had driven us all, and even his own brother had grumbled at him that there was no need for such haste.

“The hunting here is good—why hurry? We will get there in the end!”

Julio, when he spoke to me, had begun to address me with exaggerated politeness, always prefixing his requests with the word
nidee,
little sister. Still, when he thought I wasn't aware of it, I could feel his eyes upon me, making me feel vaguely uneasy.

Lucas, on the other hand, paid no attention to me unless he had to. He had dropped his old, sneering attitude, it was true, but this had been replaced by a kind of distance. He would thank me when I handed him his food, warn me when the terrain ahead of us became rough or perilous, but that was all. It was just as if the violent conflict between us had never been, and I found myself observing him, wondering what drove him.

All throughout our journey here he had seemed preoccupied. I noticed that he hardly spoke to anyone unless he was addressed, and he would sit by the fire when we made camp and stare away from the flame, into the distance. What was he thinking of?

Julio, sitting by me one night, followed the almost unconscious direction of my eyes and said softly, “My brother is a deep thinker, eh? Even for me, he is not an easy person to know.” His voice had turned almost sly. “But in this case I can guess what he is thinking of. There is a woman who waits for him on my mother's rancho. She is young and lovely, the daughter of an old friend who died. I think she waits for Lucas to make up his mind.”

“I'm sorry to say so,” I said disdainfully, “but I cannot help feeling sorry for her!”

“You do not like my brother?” Was it my imagination, or did I fancy I heard a slight note of satisfaction in Julio's voice? The next moment he shrugged, as if the matter was unimportant. “Perhaps it is better so for your sake,
nidee
.”

I did not ask him why he had said such a thing to me, not wanting the conversation to continue; and after a moment he stretched, yawning, and left me.

I stood with the others in the thin layer of snow that still lay on the ground here, and told myself vehemently that I could not possibly walk another step. What were we supposed to do now? Scale that unscalable cliff like mountain goats, and then think of a way to get around that jutting overhang that loomed menacingly over us?

Lucas Cord was looking upward also, and I thought I saw some strange blend of emotion in his face for the first time. There was the urgency I had sensed in him earlier, and something else. Despair? Frustration? It was hard to tell. Perhaps something had gone wrong; perhaps he couldn't find the way into the hidden valley, with the snow still lying on the ground.

I saw Lucas take a coiled length of rawhide from the saddle of one of the horses and put it around his neck. Then, without another word, he flattened himself against the sheer, rocky cliff face, and seemed to walk right off one edge. I think I must have gasped, for I saw Julio look towards me.

“There is a path,
nidee.
Not much, but the mountain goats made it long ago. That was how Lucas found the way into the valley. Wait, and you will see how we will all find our way there soon.”

I thought we waited for an endless time, but it was probably no longer than fifteen minutes at the most. Julio and the three Apache braves talked together in casual tones. The women busied themselves with unpacking the horses, and in the end, feeling ashamed of my inactivity, I started to help them. The packs containing the silver were heavy. They reminded me of the way in which this same silver had been obtained. Stolen, and stained with the blood of those poor soldiers who had died trying to defend it.

I heard one of the women cry out and turned at almost the same time she did, to see the rope come snaking down.

There must have been some kind of cleft up there, between the huge, overhanging mountain edge and the rocky cliff I had dismissed as being unscalable.

I stared at it in dismay. Were we expected to crawl up that steep, rocky cliff face with nothing but a thin rope to support us?

I turned to Julio, intending to make some protest, but he had already seized the dangling end of the rope, and now, using his feet for leverage against the sheer wall of rock, he began to clamber up it with surprising agility.

No sooner had he disappeared into what, from here, seemed no more than a tiny, dark-shadowed cleft, than Lucas Cord came down, the rope sliding between his gloved hands.

Without a word to me he and the other men began immediately to loop the end of the rope around one of the saddlebags, which Julio then hauled up. I stood to one side with the two other women, trying to hide the fact that I was getting angrier and angrier by the minute.

I won't go up that ridiculous rope! If my hands were to slip… I shuddered inwardly, trying not to think of it. Already my palms had begun to feel damp with sweat, and although I despised myself for cowardice, I had never cared for great heights.

The silver was hauled up first, the heavy saddlebags bumping against the face of the mountain. Then our food and supplies, including the hides and meat of the deer and bear that the men had shot.

The men went up next, just as easily as Julio had done. The women motioned to me politely, indicating that I might go first, but I shook my head just as politely. I thought that Lucas Cord raised a sarcastic eyebrow, but he said nothing except to give the women what was obviously some advice, in Apache. I watched them both clamber up with amazing ease, giggling as if it was some kind of amusing game to them.

Why did I have to be left here with
him
?
I thought he sensed my fear and gloated at it; even his next words seemed to carry an undertone of irony.

“It is your turn, little sister. You ain't afraid, are you?”

“Of course I'm not afraid!” I said sharply. “But what are you going to do about the horses? How do you intend to get
them
up there?”

I think he knew I was procrastinating. The cleft in his cheek deepened, and he narrowed his eyes at me thoughtfully.

“You worried about those two sorry-lookin' nags? Didn't think you'd be so softhearted.”

Why did he always succeed in making me angry? I had the feeling he was taunting me.

“You're surely not going to…”

“Thought about butchering them for the meat.” Catching my horrified look, he shrugged. “But if it upsets you, we could leave them right here. These are wild ponies. They'll find food for themselves until the others get ready to leave.”

“How casual you are about life, whether it's animal or human! Those poor beasts…”

“Can look after themselves fine, like I just told you. An' if you don't get started I'm goin' to have to tie one end of that rope around your waist an' haul you up like one of them sacks!”

The threatening step he took towards me made me back away. Looking back, I think it was only my anger that gave me the courage to scale that cliff face, not daring to look down. Lucas offered me his gloves, but I would not accept them. My palms carried rope burns for a few days afterwards, and I collected bruises on my knees and hips from bumping against sharp rocks as I pulled myself upward, trying to remember how the others had done it. I was never more relieved than when I felt Julio's strong hands close around my wrists as he lifted me up onto a rocky shelf that widened into a cave.

“Come,
nidee.
We go this way.”

With my knees still shaking I followed Julio around a sharp bend, and saw light at the other end of what was not actually a cave, but a tunnellike fault in the mountain.

No wonder they called this the hidden valley! I could understand why it would be almost impossible to find, and how even one man, with enough ammunition, could hold off a whole army of attackers.

“My brother found this place when he came into the mountains alone to seek his medicine dream,” Julio told me. “He saw a mountain goat seem to disappear and followed it, and that was how he came upon the valley. See,
nidee
?
All around are the sides of the mountain, like walls. It is as if the mountains were split in the middle, to make this place.”

I looked around wonderingly after we had emerged again into the daylight, and began to scramble down a rocky slope into a meadow with grama grass growing waist-high.

I thought I could see for miles ahead; the valley appeared narrow at this end, but I could see where it began to widen further on. The part I could see to my right was more rocky and mountainous, with enormous boulders scattered about as if they had rolled down the cliff many centuries ago, when perhaps a gigantic earthquake or some other upheaval of nature had created this natural valley. “It's beautiful!” I said to Julio, and he grunted with pride.

“But you have seen so little, yet. Wait until we travel farther, and then you will see! There is plenty of water here, and there are cattle and horses too. They do well here, and the herds grow, but I tell you it was a very difficult task to get them in here at the beginning!”

I thought of Lucas, who would not be troubled to bring those poor horses who had carried the silver all the way up here into the valley, and my lips tightened with indignation. And almost at the same time, he caught up with us.

The Apache warriors who had accompanied us here had disappeared, along with their women, and I was suddenly all too conscious of the fact that I was alone with my two adopted “brothers.” I told myself angrily that I could almost see Julio in the role, perhaps, but certainly not Lucas.

“I suppose we have to walk again?” I said in a voice that had hardened instinctively, now that
he
had appeared.

I looked at Julio when I spoke, but it was Lucas who answered my question. “There are horses a few miles up ahead, in a small corral. Ramon always sees that they are kept here in case they should be needed.”

“How thoughtful,” I murmured coldly, and saw Julio's eyes go from one to the other of us, although he made no comment. He knew I had no fondness for his brother; why should I pretend?

We walked forward again, with Lucas in the lead this time, and Julio following closely behind me. He seemed considerate of me and it was his hand that closed around my arm when I stumbled. Lucas did not even turn his head to see if we followed or not.

I cannot remember how far we walked. The valley widened and seemed to stretch before us, like a miniature kingdom. The country to the left was flat and grassy for the most part, to the right, where the mountain peaks seemed to tower higher than they did anywhere else, the terrain seemed rougher, and split by deep, narrow gullies or arroyos, which, Julio explained, could become roaring watercourses in the summer, when the snow began to melt on the mountaintops.

The corral Lucas had spoken of was a rough, wooden enclosure nestled in grass taller than any I'd ever seen before. There were four or five horses in it: restless, high-stepping animals of Arab stock.

Apaches did not use saddles—only blankets thrown across a horse's back and bridles made of plaited horsehair or buckskin. Even these were provided in a small lean-to by the side of the corral.

“Would you like to choose which one you'd like to ride?” Surprising me, Lucas came to lean his elbows on the rough fence beside me.

I have always loved horses, and I couldn't pretend indifference.

“That one—the spotted stallion. The breed is unfamiliar, I think, although I believe I can detect Arab blood in him.”

“You're a pretty good judge of horseflesh,
nidee.
”
Even the slightly sarcastic inflection of his voice when he called me sister could not detract from the fact that he had actually paid me a compliment. “He's half Appaloosa. Sired by the first horse I ever owned, off an Arabian mare. You sure you can handle him?”

Was he challenging me again? I gave him a level look, but I could detect no mockery in his face this time.

“May I ride him?”

He shrugged. “Mount him from the
right
side. An' remember he's used to bein' guided mostly by the pressure of your knees. Got a soft mouth, so don't saw back too hard on the reins. Best horse in the corral. You've chosen well.”

In spite of my earlier forebodings I could not help feeling a thrill of anticipation at being able to ride again. Lucas, for a change, was being almost affable, and Julio, away from his responsibilities as a family man, seemed lighthearted.

After the horses had been “saddled” Apache fashion, we set out, and it was Julio who complimented me this time.

“I see that our little sister rides well,” he commented to Lucas, who merely nodded, his eyes flickering over me without expression. He seemed to have relapsed into his usual mood of somber introspection, and as we rode forward I found myself studying him covertly. He looked like a man with something eating at him inside, but why? He was free; he had a girl waiting for him. I didn't think he was the kind of man who'd have a conscience that would bother him.

We skirted another deep, steep-sided canyon that seemed to climb to the mountain's edge, and Julio, riding close to me, said in a low voice, “My brother has a small cabin up there, a place he goes to when he wants to be alone. Even I have not been there. But then—” and he shrugged, “I do not come here often. I prefer the freedom of my people.”