The Wildest Heart (55 page)

For flight it was—and we were the hunted, although we were not certain until sometime in the morning of the second day we spent traveling across the desert.

My mind prefers to dwell on the time before that, when it seemed as if we were completely alone in a vast, primeval wasteland, and I felt like an explorer on a voyage of discovery. It was not only the desert that I began to understand better—it had its own life cycle, I found, and long ago the Apaches had discovered how to survive here, living only on what the desert itself provided. More important, now that the barriers were down between us, Lucas and I learned more about each other.

“I felt I knew you even before I had met you. Only then it was a story, something I might have read about. Mr. Bragg tried to warn me about the feud, but it did not seem real.”

We had stopped to rest in the shade of some gigantic boulders, and he turned, running his finger from my temple to my jaw, as if he traced the outline of my face.

“You didn't seem quite real either. I couldn't believe that you'd come all the way out here, fresh from England, knowing nothing, caring nothing about any of us. An' when you did come, I didn't think you'd stay. Rowena—even your name sounded grand, and different.”

“And when you met me?”

His laugh sounded free, and young and open—no longer the bitter laughter I remembered so well.

“I was of half a mind to rape you. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Lucas!”

He mimicked me teasingly, rolling his body over mine.

“Lucas! I kinda like the way you say my name, all cut off short at the end. If I'd known you were a witch-woman, I'd have kept my Henry rifle and let Julio buy you that night.”

His lips, coming down hard over mine, muffled my angry retort, and after that, for a long time, we didn't talk at all.

During that first day and a half we didn't speak about Mark, and there was still some secret fear, buried deep in my mind, that kept Elena's name from my tongue. It was enough that Lucas and I were together. We would go to Fort Selden first, since he insisted upon it; and I would speak to Mr. Bragg and learn the truth that I had already begun to suspect. Because it had to be Mark all along. Only Mark was clever enough, devious enough, patient enough. Lucas had a temper, and he was capable of violence, but not of the kind of guile that Mark had shown. And after I had spoken to Mr. Bragg? I had already resolved that Todd had to be warned. As much as I disliked the man, he deserved that much at least. Mr. Bragg would see to it. And then—I didn't know, I had not asked where Lucas intended to take me. But my finest and most expensive jewels hung from my neck in the chamois leather bag that was stamped with my initials in gold leaf.

Lucas had only raised an eyebrow and said: “Your medicine pouch?” I found that he was more curious about me than what I wore.

And I looked like an Apache woman again, in the skirt and high-necked blouse that Lucas had found for me—moccasins on my feet and my hair braided and tucked under a wide-brimmed hat. What did it matter? I told myself that I could turn my back on civilization, on everything I had known before without a qualm, as long as Lucas continued to want me. This was the kind of peace I had been seeking in the
ashram
I had run away to after my grandfather had died. A small hut, open on four sides, in the mountains of India. A place where I had been told, gently, that it was necessary to detach oneself from worldly possessions in order to find the freedom of the mind I looked for. Even then I had not been sure what I wanted from life, or what I searched for. And then, on another mountaintop, I had found it and turned my back on it. It seemed to me now that I had been trying to escape from the fact that I was born a woman.

My concentration on all these things is an excuse to postpone the inevitable, of course. We had formed the habit of traveling fastest and farthest at night, and resting during the hottest part of the day. That particular morning, when we first discovered that we were being followed, and by whom, is one I would forget if I could. But my mind keeps returning to it.

That morning. After the coolness of the night, the renewed heat each day seemed even more unbearable. The sun reflected off the stones and the dust and even the boulders.

Last night we had traveled more slowly than we should have, for Lucas said safer to cross the dreaded malpais, or lava flow, in the daylight, and the land that lay ahead of us now was truly a desolation. A river of liquid fire, it must have been once, and now, hardened, the fire had turned to rock, twisted into weird shapes and formations, its surface a mass of knife-sharp pebbles and smaller rocks. And beyond, the towering bulk of the Fra Cristobal mountains. I saw Lucas look up at those jagged peaks, frowning.

“It'll be faster going around, but I ain't certain.” I thought that he spoke almost to himself, eyes still squinted against the reflected sunlight. “I have a real funny feelin'…” in that moment he was all Apache, acting on his instincts alone.

He said sharply, when I made some movement, “Stay here, Ro. Undercover. I'm going up there to check on our back trail.”

I had learned not to ask questions, so I did as I was told, while he took the field glasses and went easily up a slope formed by an ancient rockfall. I had dismounted, and I waited as quietly as I could, resting while I could, trying not to think that he had been gone a long time—almost too long.

I held the gun that Lucas had given me across my knees and tried to stay alert, but even so I did not hear his return until he was almost on top of me.

“Lucas! I had begun to—” and then, seeing his face I broke off sharply. “Something's wrong. Isn't it?”

“You're beginning to read me as easy as a book, seems like!” He hunkered down beside me, eyes narrow and bleak. “Listen, Ro—it's worse than I thought it might be, or maybe your husband's just a darn sight smarter than I had him figured, which makes me plain stupid, I guess.”

“We're being followed? But you were expecting that we would be…”

“Not by them. Damn! It don't make sense, or else he was just plain lucky. Apache scouts—White Mountain, from the look of them. An' if anyone can pick up our back trail, they can.” Lucas rolled a cigarette, something I had not seen him do since we had started out together, and each movement was almost vicious. “Your husband's with them,” he added conversationally. “Didn't expect that either, but I guess he figures a woman like you is worth riding through hell for. An' that's somethin' I can hardly blame him for.”

“Scouts? You mean army scouts?” My mind was still trying to register the shock of his first statement.

“Apache scouts,” Lucas said patiently. “They work for the army, sure—General Crook had a bunch of them working for him. But it ain't normal to find them up this far north, an' as far as I'd heard, they didn't have any working out of Fort Craig. Only thing I can think of is that some of them were sent up here on some special mission—maybe there was trouble on the Warm Springs Reservation. An' if they were gettin' ready to head back at just about the time your husband rode into Fort Craig all wild-eyed an' upset.”

I remembered Mark's boasting of all the important people he knew, and I could almost see it happening, just as Lucas had described.

“He'd have told them that you took me away by force,” I said slowly. Yes—that was exactly what Mark's pride would have made him say. Unthinkable to have anyone know that his bride of only a few weeks would run away from him with a lover. “And he probably told them that these were part of the reason.” I touched the pouch that hung so heavily between my breasts. “My jewels. I thought they might come in useful.”

“Your—” and then the corner of Lucas' mouth twitched in an unwilling grin. “Trust a woman to think of everything.”

Looking back, it seems incredible that we could sit there so calmly, talking of what might have happened, with our pursuers coming closer every minute. I think now that Lucas deliberately gave me time to digest the news he had just given me, and to become calm.

“Well—” he said at last, “I guess that leaves us with no choice. We head for the mountains.” But he still frowned.

In how many ways is it possible to relive horror? Lucas told me later that he should have heeded the faint, uneasy feeling that persisted as we began the slow and tortuous ascent of the mountain that loomed almost directly in front of us. But he had me to worry about now, and the San Andres Mountains, where he would have preferred to hide out, if it came to that, lay across a stretch of comparatively flat desert that afforded little cover and no water at all. The Fra Cristobal Range was almost upon us, and if we could cross it, the Black Range, which Lucas called home, would soon loom up to the west.

There would be no time to rest today, except for very short periods. I knew that without having to be told. And our pursuers, although more than half a day's journey behind us, would not rest either. Neither of us, unfortunately, could have guessed that an even worse danger lay ahead.

It was late evening when it happened, and I was almost dropping from sheer weariness. I remember glancing upward, at serrated peaks that had turned crimson in the last fierce rays of the sun, the shadows dark between them. Here, in the narrow gorge up which we rode, following some centuries-old Indian trail, it was already gloomy and menacing-looking. Lucas was riding a little ahead of me when I thought I noticed a sudden rigidity in the way he held himself.

I kneed my horse forward, and without turning his head he said quietly, “Don't stop to argue with me. Get off your horse, quickly. Slip off its right side and stay still.” At the same time he brought up the rifle he held across his saddle horn with incredible speed.

Everything seemed to happen too fast—one detail merging into another. Rifle shots, deafening in the stillness, bouncing off rocky walls to assault the eardrums. I almost fell off the horse, barely remembering to hang onto its reins, and hardly felt the stinging, burning sensation in my arm as I did. A dark shape came tumbling down from some rocks to the left and above us, but I was too occupied with my plunging, rearing horse to even question what was happening yet.

I heard a wild, fearful yell, and a horse, riderless, went headlong up the canyon, drawing more fire from above. Suddenly, before I could scream his name, Lucas was beside me, pushing me back against the rocky wall so that I went stumbling to my knees. A shot ricocheted screamingly from just above my head. The horse I was still holding shuddered, and seemed to sink very slowly, folding into itself like a cardboard animal. And I was lying flat on my belly beside it, suddenly aware of a warm trickling down my arm, a gun thrust into my hand, while Lucas whispered urgently, “Lie just the way you are, an' don't move. But I want you to keep firing, up at those rocks. Take your time, but just keep firing often enough to keep him off guard. I'm goin' up there after him.”

My mind was too numb with shock and disbelief for me to be able to utter a word, much less protest. It was suddenly darker than I had remembered only a few minutes earlier, and Lucas fired twice in quick succession, disappearing from my side while the acrid powersmoke still hung in the air.

I heard another, somehow perfunctory shot from somewhere above, and then, remembering what I had been told, my mind began to function mechanically. I must keep firing to give Lucas the cover he needed. I held the carbine balanced across the carcass of the dead horse, and keeping my head down, began to shoot, very carefully, at the place where I could see white puffs of smoke. I remember hoping that I wouldn't have to reload. Already my arm, where a bullet had grazed me, was beginning to feel numb. I tried not to wonder where Lucas was—if he had reached cover before one of those shots had found him. Thank God for the fact that darkness falls so quickly here in the mountains… and remember to keep firing, Rowena, you can bandage your arm later, it's only a scratch…

The carbine bucked against my shoulder, and the smell of burned powder was acrid in my nostrils. I tried to space out my shots, aiming carefully enough at that notch in the rocks above where I could see flashes so that he or they would think that Lucas was shooting. I had the advantage of being in deep shadow, but twice at least I heard bullets buzz within a few inches of my head like angry bees, ricocheting off the wall of rock at my back.

I hadn't yet had time to feel frightened. It was only when, from somewhere above me, I heard a choking scream of terror, suddenly cut off short, that I suddenly began to tremble with sheer reaction, hardly realizing I was sobbing aloud until I felt the wetness of tears on my dust-streaked cheeks. What had happened up there? Who had screamed? There was no more firing now, and the silence seemed to press heavily against my ears and was all the more unnerving because it had followed on that terrible scream.

I think I almost screamed myself when, after what seemed like hours, I heard Lucas call softly from somewhere up ahead.

“Ro? Hold your fire. It's all right now.”

And then he was holding me in his arms; and I was clinging to him as if I had to reassure myself of the reality of his presence, trying to fight back the shameful sobs that threatened to choke me.

“It all happened so suddenly that I still can't believe—Lucas, no, I'm not crying because I am afraid! Only because—because I'm so happy you're back and you're safe!”

He tilted my chin up with one finger. “Who else but a fool woman would cry from gladness?” But in spite of the pretended harshness of his words, his voice was tender.

It was only later, after Lucas had washed out and bandaged the ugly bullet groove in my arm, that he told me what he had learned.

“There were only three of them, luckily for us. I got the first one, you saw him fall. An' wounded the second bad enough so he was barely breathin' by the time I got up there. But he talked before he died.”

As Lucas continued to talk, my mind became filled with a different kind of horror.

“Mark Shannon's no fool, an' so far, he's been lucky as well. He sent some of his best men up ahead, while he followed our trail with Burris and Sonora an' three Apache scouts he met up with at Fort Craig. Seems like they'd been visiting relatives at Warm Springs, an' the colonel there suggested they might be glad to help track down an abducted wife—if he offered them enough money.”

Lucas's voice was expressionless, but I drew my breath in sharply. “There's more,” he said before I could speak. “Half the cavalry is out lookin' for us too, but your husband's given the men in his pay orders to stay one jump ahead of the soldiers—an' to shoot first.”

It was dark by now. A clear, cool night with a scattering of stars spangling the velvety midnight blue of the sky. Lucas and I looked at each other, and he got up and began methodically to strip the horse of the gear it had carried. I think he wanted to give me time to digest the thought that Mark wanted me dead too.

And once I had realized this, I wondered why I hadn't seen it before. Not only did I know far too much about Mark's plans, but worse, from his point of view, I had betrayed and publicly humiliated him. So now he had begun to hate me, I was sure, with the same unrelenting single-mindedness with which he had once loved and pursued me.

I put some of these thoughts into words later, when Lucas and I had started off again, slowed down by the fact that the bullet wound in my arm had weakened me.

“An' there's your money too,” he said quietly, and I was almost surprised that I had not thought of that first. The money, of course. If Mark couldn't have me he'd have enough wealth to buy him the power he craved. And it was my money he was offering as the price for my death!

The thought seemed unreal. Everything seemed unreal during those hours when we seemed to walk endlessly, both of us strangely calm. The horses were gone, and the mule would only slow us down now. I knew, without having to be told, how far sounds could carry in the clear desert air. The shots would have been heard, of course, and now they would all be racing to cut us off. I must have been slightly light-headed from loss of blood and nervous reaction, for I remember thinking with a kind of cynical amusement that it was a change to be the hunted instead of the hunter. Strange, that all those times in India, when I had gone on tiger shoots with my grandfather and his friend the maharajah, I had never once stopped to think of how the tiger might feel.

I tried to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other as I had done once, so long ago. I carried only a water canteen, and as much beef jerky as I could carry, stuffed into the pocket of my shirt. Lucas carried a rifle, two handguns and bandoliers crossed over his chest with all the ammunition he could find. I took comfort from the fact that we were together.

Even if…
I found myself thinking,
even if the worst happens, I wouldn't care. We love each other.
And yet, even the thought of death seemed unreal. I could not imagine dying, I would not think of the possibility that we might be trapped after all.

I cannot recall how many miles we had covered before we rested, and this, I know, only because of me. Every breath I took seemed to rasp in my throat, and in spite of the coldness of the night I was soaked with sweat. Lucas put his arm around my waist and made me lean against him, while my breathing slowed.

“Where…”

He seemed to know what I had been going to ask.

“Fort Thorn. It's the closest now, an' the one place they won't expect us to be headed for. An' you'll be safe. Make sure you get the colonel there to send off a telegraph to Fort Selden.” Lucas cut himself off to swear softly and bitterly. “Damn! That's somethin' I didn't think off. The telegraph. That's how he got the cavalry from Fort McCrae out lookin' for us too. Now if only they sent a message on to Colonel Poynter at Selden…”

“You mean that he might come out to look for us as well? Oh, Lucas!”

“Ro, don't hope too hard. Fort Thorn's still the closest. But if I can get you there safely…”

“And you? I'm not going anywhere without you! And how do you know it'll be safe for you?”

“Stop arguin' and start walking.” He wouldn't answer me, and soon afterward I had almost lost my breath again, and time seemed unending and meaningless.

It seemed impossible that the sun could be rising again, turning the sky faintly pink. Had we really walked all night?

In the shelter of a nest of boulders I waited, conscious only of the relief I felt to be resting again. Leaving one of the handguns with me, Lucas had taken the field glasses and disappeared. I think that in spite of all my resolutions I must have dozed off through sheer exhaustion, for the next thing I knew was that I was being shaken awake.

“Ro? Are you all right?”

“Yes.” I heard myself mumble, and then I was being pulled to my feet again, and I had barely time to wonder why Lucas looked so strange when he told me, his husky voice dispassionate.

“I couldn't see how close or how far away your husband is. My guess is he an' his men are right behind us—in the mountains already. But you got friends comin' to the rescue from the direction of Fort Thorn. Todd Shannon… wonder what in hell he was doing there?”

“Todd?” I couldn't keep the dismay from my voice. I looked up at Lucas, and he was staring down at me through narrowed, thoughtful eyes.

“Lucas—what are we going to do?”

“Fort Thorn's still the safest place for you. An' for all that I hate Shannon's guts, I doubt if he'll shoot you down in cold blood. So—we're still goin' south.”

“It's all my fault. If I hadn't…” Almost unwillingly, his arms went around me. “It's no one's fault. Or mine, for not seeing earlier that I'd come to need you. Rowena… crazy name. Crazy woman…”

I had the terrible, horrifying feeling that we were saying good-bye as our lips met. I suppose we wasted precious time as we held each other closely, bodies molding together. How can I remember now what thoughts went through my head, if, indeed, I was capable of coherent thought by then? What I remember most vividly is exactly what I do not care to recall—a nightmare without end.

I remember too that I would not do as I was told, so that what happened later was my fault, my guilt to bear.

The mountains were no longer a haven and a refuge but danger, because of the cover they gave to those who followed too closely behind us. And if I had not been along, as a liability and a burden, that Lucas could have escaped them all. But he had accepted me, and taken me as his woman, in much the same way that an Apache warrior would take a wife. And having taken the responsibility for me, Lucas also accepted the risks.

I want to digress here—if only to postpone the inevitable. I want to tell of what I did not know then but know now.

Todd Shannon had been supposed to meet Mr. Bragg at Fort Selden, but as luck would have it, he was still at Fort Thorn, being entertained in style by the commanding officer there, when the telegraph message had arrived.

And at Fort Selden, which was much further off, the same message had also been received, but with very different reactions from Colonel Poynter and Mr. Bragg. They had set out too, but several hours behind the rest. And closest of all was the man that I had chosen to be my husband—or who had chosen me. I had never felt closer to the Apache, whose very name meant “enemy,” than I did then. I was with my lover, my man, and I would not leave him. I would die with him if I had to, but I would not be separated from him again.

I didn't try to explain these emotions to myself, nor to Lucas either. But when the shooting started, and we were in a place sheltered on three sides but not from behind, I disregarded Lucas's angry order that I should stay beside him until there was a lull in the firing, and he could send me down to whatever safety I could find with Todd Shannon and his Texan gunslingers.

I said very calmly, “If we're going to die, Lucas, then we'll die together. Did you really imagine that I would agree to leave you?”