The Darkest Heart (14 page)

To her disappointment, Judge was not at his house, and the housekeeper told her he wouldn’t be back until the midday meal. She decided to wait. She curled up on the sofa in the small but charming living room, in front of an adobe hearth that added much warmth in the winter. She tried to pass the time reading a book by Dickens,
A Tale of Two Cities
, but there was no way she could concentrate—not when she was nervous and perspiring with anxiety. She bit her knuckle and remembered that this was really all her fault—for dancing with Jack Savage.

“Hi, Candice.”

Little Tommy Reinhart was staring at her with a grin. He was almost six. “Hello, Tommy. Did you have fun at the barbecue?”

“I hated it,” Tommy said sullenly. “Tell me a story.”

Candice looked at him, realizing for the first time that if she ever married Judge she would become a mother to two children. It was a sobering thought.

“Tell me a story,” he said again, sitting next to her.

“Well …” Candice began, and then Lisa Anne appeared in the doorway. “Hello, Lisa Anne.”

“What are you doing here?” the girl said, staring enigmatically.

Candice was taken aback by the child’s rudeness. “I’m visiting your father.”

“Are you going to tell Tommy a story?” she asked, approaching.

“Not today.”

“Oh, please, please, please!” Tommy screamed.

Candice almost grimaced.

Lisa Anne was studying her.

“You shouldn’t look at your elders like that,” Candice said. “And it’s rude not to greet a visitor properly and offer refreshments. Shouldn’t you be doing your chores or your homework?”

“My chores are done, and so is my homework,” Lisa Anne said calmly, as if she were twelve and not nine. Tommy was still shrieking about wanting a story. “Shut up,” Lisa Anne said to him. She turned to Candice. “You’re the one who ran off with the gambler.”

Candice stared.

“You’re the one who was dancing with the half-breed too. Are you really a whore?”

Candice gaped and clenched her hands to stop herself from smacking the little brat. “I’m going to tell your father about your awful manners,” she warned.

“Why? Because it’s true?”

She was incredulous and stunned. Just then Judge appeared in the doorway without his familiar, warm smile. “Hello, Candice.” He sent the children outside.

Candice was on her feet, biting her lip. “Hi.” She tried a smile on him. “I … I had to come and see you, Judge.”

His jaw was tight. He gestured toward the couch. Did Lupa offer you any coffee?”

“Yes, yes, she did.” Candice sat down. Judge sat in a chair across from her. He didn’t say anything. “You’re upset with me.”

Judge looked at her. “Am I?”

“You’re angry.”

“If you want to dance with half-breed savages, go right ahead.”

“It was only a dance—and he’s half white.”

“You two were alone for days on the desert,” Judge said vehemently, abruptly. “And then you
chose
to be with him again. I think you like his company, Candice.”

Candice was pale.

Judge stood. “I think some of those rumors are true. Are they?”

She got to her feet. “No—no.”

“We don’t have anything to say to each other.”

Candice trembled. “I thought we were friends—more than friends.”

Judge laughed bitterly. “So did I. Then you eloped with that gambler—and showed up back here with a breed. I thought you were a lady.”

It hurt. “Judge …”

“I think you had better leave,” Judge Reinhart said.

Candice looked at him, feeling a burn starting. “It’s not right or fair for you to condemn me for something you know nothing about.”

Judge stepped to the doorway.

Candice sucked in her breath and managed to exit with her head held high. But once outside, she stumbled from the house, devastated. He had called her a loose woman without saying the word his daughter had used:
whore
. God—she and Savage had only danced! No—they had done more, much more, and maybe he was right—maybe she was no lady, not in truth. It was a terrible, horrible, wrenching realization, and she was barely aware of the rolling scenery as she and Pedro left the ranch. But about an hour out from Judge’s, they both noticed a dark, ominous cloud rising out of the south, from behind them. “Rain,” Pedro said.

Candice was about to agree, but suddenly her heart constricted, “No,” she said, grabbing Pedro’s arm. “It’s smoke.”

She could feel the cowboy tense beside her. The rising cloud was so obviously smoke that they thought they could smell burning wood and brush. “That must be the V Bar,” Candice said, hearing the worry in her voice. The fire had to be huge—to be seen from so far away.

“Do not worry, señora,” Pedro said, but there was no assurance in his tone. “Fire—may be all right, this time of the year, no?”

Candice knew he was trying to tell her that a brushfire
could happen for any reason at all. She didn’t speak the one word she was trying not to think: Apache.

But after another fifteen or twenty minutes passed without incident, both she and Pedro began to breathe freely again, as the smoke was left almost directly behind them. Candice pulled off her bonnet to redo her hair. Unruly tresses had been teasing the back of her neck, sticking damply. She pulled out a pin and stabbed it back in. Suddenly Pedro gave a scream, slumping over the side of the wagon.

Candice grabbed the reins, about to pull up the team, when the arrow sticking out of the middle of his back registered. She slapped the reins, screaming at the team, urging them into a gallop. Suddenly she heard hoofbeats, dozens of them pounding from behind, getting closer, and frantically, her heart thudding in her throat, she looked over her shoulder. Ten or fifteen Apache were closing in from both sides, red and white warpaint streaking their faces, feathers poking out of their unbound hair. It took just a glance to see they were carrying not only rifles and bows but clubs and lances. A war party! Candice slapped the reins harder, crying out to the horses, fear overwhelming her, taking away all thoughts, her only desire being to escape.

Sweat poured down her face and blinded her. The terrain rose and fell in front of her maddeningly. The Apaches had let loose with their wild, strange war cries, and they echoed sickeningly around her. A rider drew abreast of her, grinning. Candice screamed at the team. The rider was moving past. Another warrior was in his wake. Candice whipped her horses. The first Apache was leaping onto the back of one of the team and already slowing it. The second warrior was at her knee, and then he was in the buckboard, shoving her aside, grabbing the reins. Candice fell on top of Pedro as the team began to slow down. She threw herself off the wagon.

She rolled and rolled, her skirts twisting around her legs. Gasping, she stumbled to her feet, running blindly. A whoop sounded in her ear. Just as the horse drew alongside her, she screamed. The Indian swept her up into his embrace at a gallop, as if she were a sack of flour.

His body was hard and sweat-streaked, and his torso was
greased. He smelled like horse, buckskin, bear fat, and sweat. She struggled in vain, but his grip was iron. He let out a wild, triumphant cry, trotting his pony into a circle of curious, painted faces. Candice closed her eyes and prayed.

The news spread like wildfire.

Tucson was in an uproar. The Henderson ranch had been attacked by an Apache war party, half of it burned to the ground, two men killed and one captured. And—Candice Carter was missing.

Jack was drinking whiskey in the one-room saloon when he heard the first, and he knew that Shozkay had retaliated—obviously tracking the man he had marked to Henderson’s. Then he heard the second bit of information and his guts froze up inside. “What do you mean,” he demanded of the Mexican sitting at the other table sharing the news with two friends, “Candice Carter is missing?”

The man looked at him and then turned his back, dismissing him.

Jack was on his feet and flinging him against the wall, his hands on the man’s throat. “I asked you a question,
amigo
. What do you mean—Candice Carter is missing?”

Frantically the man told the story. Candice had gone to visit Judge Reinhart in a buckboard with one of the High C hands. That was yesterday. They hadn’t returned, and the Carters had found the wagon, Pedro dead, Candice gone. They had clearly run into the war party that had attacked the Hendersons, and the Carters were now out scouring the countryside, looking for Candice.

Jack felt his insides cramp.

Candice was beautiful, blond, and a female—which meant she had been spared and taken prisoner. Unless—
Usen
—unless in the bloodlust of the battle she was mistakenly hurt.

Jack was already out the door and heading for the livery. It no longer mattered what had happened between them the last time they’d met. He’d already buried that encounter in cheap whiskey.

There was still plenty of light left. Keeping the black to a tireless lope, Jack rode out of town. Hours later he found the buckboard.

By then the sun was dipping low past the mountains’
jagged edges, and twilight was settling in. He’d almost missed it. The wagon was lying still and horseless between stands of mesquite and yucca. He approached, reining in.

Jack studied the terrain, squinting hard. The story unfolded. He could see that Candice had fallen, or jumped, out of the wagon, and run a short distance—only to be captured by one of the Apaches. He grimaced.

The thought of Candice at one of the brave’s mercy unnerved him, despite the fact that women and children were rarely harmed and usually well cared for, eventually absorbed into the tribe. Only adult male prisoners were taken alive to be tortured and killed by the kin of the warrior being avenged. Now she was the property of the brave who had captured her, to do with as he wished, or give to whom he pleased.

The good news was that the Apaches did not rape. But if Candice did not obey and behave, she could be severely beaten, even killed, A terrible fear rose up in him, and he breathed a quick prayer to Usen and White Painted Woman for her protection. He began to call too on all the gans, the Mountain Spirits, for their help. Then he trotted the black away, toward the mountains, following the tracks of the war party.

Candice no longer wondered what would have happened to her if she couldn’t ride. Her captor had mounted her on one of the team, bareback, her hands tied tightly behind her back. They had ridden all that afternoon and au that night, stopping only once to water the horses. Candice wasn’t blindfolded, and at first she had tried to memorize where they were taking her, but it was impossible in the dark. All she knew was that they were heading up, into the Catalinas, endlessly, all through that first night.

There was another prisoner. A lithe, terrified vaquero, only a few years older than Candice, whom she didn’t think she recognized. He had a bandaged shoulder. He knew her. Once, as their eyes made contact—his imploring, desperate—he mouthed her name. Candice understood his fear. The Apaches rarely took prisoners. She had heard all kinds of stories about how they mutilated and tortured their captives. She was too frightened for herself to be frightened for him.

When the sun came up she saw they were traveling in a northwesterly direction. By then she was freezing, the thin silk of her dress providing no warmth, and it was hours before the sun was strong enough to warm her. By midday her face and the top of her chest were burned. She had never spent any time outdoors without some kind of hat, even in the mountains.

Her captor led her horse, never once looking at her. They trailed the rest of the war party. No one seemed to notice her, or care that she was first freezing, then burning, now dying of thirst—her thighs sore and her whole body aching from the endless riding. She was weary to the point of falling asleep, and by the time the sun was past mid-sky, she did, dropping over the horse’s neck.

She awoke on the rocky ground, on her back, her shoulders aching unbearably, her wrists raw and bleeding. Her captor was yanking her to her feet, and for the first time she really got a look at him. He was above average height, wearing nothing but buckskin breeches and thigh-high moccasins. He had a quiver of arrows and a bow slung over one huge
shoulder. His shoulders were broad and oversized for his height, his chest massive, his thighs huge. He was an extraordinarily muscular man, just short of being fat. His face was round, high-cheekboned, and flat-nosed. He wasn’t ugly, just very Indian. His eyes snapped at her.

“Please,” Candice begged through swollen, split lips. “Please, untie my hands.” She made a whimpering sound. “I won’t run away, I promise.” He regarded her diffidently. “There’s nowhere for me to go to. Please!”

His hands clamped around her waist, and he threw her back on the mare. Then he turned, about to leap on his own pony.

“Water!” Candice cried. “Please, water!” And because many Apache understood Spanish, she added,
“Agua! Por favor, agua!”

He was astride, trotting off, leading her and her mount. Candice felt tears of pain and despair trickle down her face.

She had hoped, at first, that she would be rescued. Now, exhausted, aching, thirsty, and weak, she was afraid of her fate, afraid she would never see her home again, never see her brothers and her father.…

She thought about Jack Savage. He was half Apache. She thought about how he had cared for her when he had found her dying in the desert. He hadn’t treated her like this. Was it possible—and she prayed—that he would know her captors? That she might see him? That he would free her?

But then she couldn’t avoid the most important question of all, the one that terrified her. What were they going to do to her? She released a sob. The brave was impervious to it.

They traveled on, through another night. So those stories were true too, about how Apache braves could ride for days at a time without food, water, and sleep. Candice rode in a semidozing state. Every time she fell asleep she jerked herself awake, afraid of falling off. Now they were riding along a narrow path. To her right, rocky cliffs soared, covered with pine, fir, and oak. To her left, it was thousands of feet straight down the mountain into a deep, fathomless canyon, and one fall would be her last.