Once A Wolf (36 page)

found a half-smoked cigarette. He threw it to the ground in disgust. "Don't think he'll let her?

You don't know Tomás. She's got him in her spell. If she was going to run to MacLean, she

would have let me take her. She's playing some game, and I'm going to stop her."

Felícita closed her eyes. He caught her by the chin and forced her to look at him.

"Oh, she'll come. She has a real fondness for you, chiquita. Maybe the only real thing about her.

She'll come, and when she does—maybe I'll sell her to MacLean, or maybe—" He smiled.

Felícita had no trouble understanding what he meant.

He hated so much. So much that her head rang constantly, making it impossible to think, let

alone resist. His body's hurt was more direct, more understandable, maybe even something she

could control a little, and so ease the chaos in her mind.

She reached for his wounded hand. He flinched. In spite of her terror, she kept hold. The rags

he'd used to bind the wounds were almost soaked through.

With small, cautious gestures she pretended to unwind his bandage. A strange look came into

his eyes. He got up and went to the saddlebags he had dropped on the ground. From them he

drew a shirt, ragged but clean. He sat back down on the stool and held out his arm.

Carefully she began to unroll the bandage. The wound was ugly, but she did not look away.

Fresh blood washed over her fingers. She picked up the shirt and tried to tear it, but the cloth

was too heavy. There was nothing with which to cut.

"Here." Suddenly Sim was holding a knife, offering it to her with a twisted smile. "Take it."

The knife, like Sim, was full of violence. Now it could be used to heal. A little of her fear went

away. She cut the shirt into strips and gently laid them over the wound. Some inner knowledge

told her what she must do, though she'd never helped anyone who was hurt in this way. The

feeling it gave her was so sweet and wonderful that she almost didn't hear Sim's hatred.

Sim's breathing went from heavy and swift to low and steady. She finished up the last of the

shirt strips to tie off the bandage. Maybe it wouldn't last very long, but it was better than

before.

He raised his arm to examine her handiwork. She knew he still hurt, but that, too, was better

than before.

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"Damn," he said softly. For a moment he seemed at a loss; confusion replaced his anger. She

felt dizzy with the changes in him. He snatched up the knife, overturning the stool as he rose,

and strode across the room. Only the wall stopped him.

"You think I'm an evil man," he said abruptly.

She shook her head instinctively, and then realized she meant the denial. Sim was full of hate

and anger and dreadful feelings, and yet… Maybe she was too ignorant to know what evil really

was. Nearly all she understood of the world came to her filtered through the minds and

emotions of others, and only a handful of those others had been more than strangers. She

could barely remember her mother and father. Tio seldom spoke of the world outside their

village, though he had once traveled far and wide. There were the villagers, including the men

who'd driven her out, but until the end they'd usually avoided her uncle's house.

And then Rowena and Tomás, with their great, unspoken passion for one another… and Sim

Kavanagh. If he was evil, there were too many things she could never hope to understand.

"I've done… evil things," Sim said. His voice dropped low. "I know what I am. But there're worse

men than me." He swung around and knelt beside the bed, gripping its rickety frame. "Cole

MacLean. Tomás's enemy. My enemy." He laughed. "There's a lot Tomás doesn't know about

me. He thinks he does. I know what he's thinking now."

She held her breath. He was talking in a way he hadn't done before, and his heart was opening

to her. To her.

"He was the only man I ever trusted," he said. "Until she came to the cañon. I knew what she'd

do to him from the beginning, but he wouldn't listen." His eyes no longer saw Felícita. "Women

are good for one thing. I know better than anyone. My mother was a whore. A stinking whore

who hated me from the day I was born."

There was no bandage in the world that could bind this wound. Felícita touched his uninjured

hand. He didn't seem to notice.

"They said she was beautiful once, high-class—like Lady Rowena. By the time I was born she

was working in a whorehouse in Hat Rock, Texas. That's where I grew up. The madam was my

first lay. I knew everything there was to know about females by the time I was thirteen. Ma

never told me who my father was. Not until she was ugly with sickness and dying. Then she told

me to run to him and make him pay for what he did to her."

Felícita curled her fingers around his as if she might fall if she let go. She could see only vague

images of the things he spoke of, could hardly begin to imagine them, but his self-hatred and

sorrow were clear as a mountain sky. They shook her to the core.

"I found him, all right," he said. "I found my daddy. Only he didn't want no whore's son to be

part of his nice, respectable, powerful family. He made sure no one else ever found out about

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me or my loving mother. By then she was dead. If she'd found out what he did to me, she

wouldn't have given a damn. She'd have cursed me from the grave."

What did he do to you? Felícita asked inside her mind. She wanted to speak it out loud, but the

fear was still too great. Sim was too close, in every way. He had let down his walls, and it was

just a single step from feeling what he felt to knowing what he knew. One step, and she would

become Sim Kavanagh.

She snatched back her hands and folded them under her arms. Sim blinked, and the distant,

lost look in his gave way to derision and scorn.

"Well, chiquita," he said, "maybe you wish you hadn't doctored me up. I'm still able to use this."

He touched the butt of his gun. "When I go down, I'm taking someone with me."

"No," she whispered.

"What?"

"Please—no. No killing—"

"You can talk?" He grabbed her by the arms and shook her. "How long? Damn you, if you've

been deceiving me—"

"No." She closed her eyes again, as if she could block his anger. "Only… a night ago. Before that,

I…" She had given up trying to figure out what had happened when she lost her voice. It was

after the village men came for her that she found herself unable to speak.

Until she had to save Rowena.

Sim let her go with a little push that sent her rolling back on the cot. "So you're not a mute at

all. That's how Tomás got after me so fast, isn't it? I should have—" He clenched and

unclenched his fists. "It doesn't matter. You can't stop whatever I decide to do." As if to prove it

to both of them, he lunged at her and pinned her to the bed. He kissed her as he'd done in the

cañon, but this time his mouth softened after a few moments. Felícita felt the difference, in his

heart as well as his body.

The need was still there, just as it had been the first time, demanding and grasping. Before,

she'd been afraid that the sheer force of it would swallow her up. She'd only begun to

understand what it meant when he'd pushed her away. And then he'd made her betray

Rowena.

Now the truth came to her like the singing of angels. He needed her, but he couldn't see it. He

made himself blind with his hatred for the world.

Yet he came to her like an injured animal hiding in a safe place where he could heal. She was

that place. Something in her was like… like the bandages she'd used on his arm, only the healing

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he sought was for his soul. The idea filled her with awe even as she trembled with the terrible

weight of it.

She, of all people, had the means to speak to this man as no one else could. In Los Milagros, she

had told people what she sensed they wanted to hear. It would not so easy with Sim.

What would she give to save Rowena and Tomás? Could she take such a fearful risk? Could she

make him believe a truth not in her own heart?

When he loosened his hold enough for her to breathe, she spoke.

"I will not stop you," she said. "I cannot. But I will stay with you, Sim Kavanagh."

He held her away to stare at her face. "You're damned right you will."

"You can force me," she said. "But I will go with you willingly." She touched his lips. He flinched.

"I will follow you to the ends of the earth and never leave you—if we go now. Far away from

this place."

"Still trying to save your friends." He laughed unpleasantly. "Ready to trade your body for their

lives. You think you're worth anything to me except as bait?" Yes.

Her simple answer left him without a retort. He wiped his mouth with a dirty sleeve and left her

lying on the bed.

"Everything is for sale," he said. "Life is like a whorehouse—any virgin'll sell herself for the right

price. I'm buying my life from Cole MacLean. Tomás thinks he can buy revenge. You think you

can buy mercy. Only you can't buy what ain't there."

"You are right," she said, wondering who spoke with her dry lips. "You cannot buy a life you do

not have, Sim Kavanagh. But I know there is mercy in you."

His eyes were cold. "You're so sure. Is it because you are a witch, like they said? Maybe you can

tell what people are thinking?" He smiled. "What am I thinking now, chiquita?"

"I can feel… what you feel."

He slammed his fist into the wall of the jacal, making the whole hut shudder. "And it doesn't

scare you?"

"Yes." She made herself breathe in and out and in again. "You have suffered much. But you

want to make other people suffer, too. You want to keep Tomás and Rowena apart. But you

can't." She stood up. "They love each other." She was amazed once again at her own certainty,

the ease with which the words came to her. How was she to know of such love, any more than

evil? And yet it was so. She knew.

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"And you love Tomás," she said. "You don't want to hurt him. Please—" She held out her hand.

"Let us go away from here. I… can make you happy."

For a long time he didn't speak. His heart leaped from one emotion to another, unable to

decide what to feel: anger, envy, sadness, loss, jealousy, hope, despair. When he looked at her

again, his face showed nothing, not even indifference.

"Happy?" he said. "There's only one thing that'll make me happy." He spun on his heel and

strode for the door.

This was not how it was to be. For once she had been so confident of herself. He was to

understand, to listen, to let go…

She ran after him. "Where are you going?"

"To find Cole MacLean." The door swung shut in her face.

She laid her cheek against the rough wood and wept.

After a while she went outside and saw that the sky was growing light in the east, the pale false

light that comes an hour before true dawn.

Sim had left her horse wandering loose outside the hut. It hadn't gone far; she coaxed softly

until it came to her. She patted its shoulder.

"Will you bear me a little farther, amigo?" she whispered.

She knew how to find Sim. She was no wolf to follow a trail by smell, but she had learned that

men carried with them markers far stronger than any scent.

Sim Kavanagh most of all.

Rowena sighed and adjusted the kerchief over her head once more. With a sideways glance at

Tomás, she scratched beneath the waistband of the ill-fitting garment that passed as a dress.

He smothered a grin behind his hand and tried to look appropriately sympathetic to her plight.

He had "borrowed" the dress from a small farm, where it had been hanging on a line outside

the run-down building. He'd left enough money to more than pay for five such dresses, but the

lady had made clear that she wished the original owner had kept this one.

Indeed, it didn't do much for her beauty. But that was the point. There was no question of

entering Las Vegas as Lady Rowena Forster and the wanted outlaw El Lobo. "You must look like

an ordinary settler's wife," he'd told her. He had to admit she looked much more fetching in the

skirt and blouse of the past few days, but he'd thought the faded calico, with its patches at the

elbows and general shapelessness, would disguise her unique attractions beyond any

recognition.

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Little hope of that. Even the kerchief barely covered the bleached gold of her hair. He himself

had donned his own set of worn farmer's clothing quite unlike his usual more flamboyant garb,

but there were those who would know him on sight.

He considered the prospect and dismissed it. He had not been himself for weeks; his emotions