The Wildest Heart (56 page)

I took one of the handguns and a cartridge belt, and crawled up the unprotected slope at our back. I suppose now, looking back, that the first man I encountered, hearing the shots, had not imagined he would meet anyone as he crept silently up from the rear. But he met me, and I shot him, without pausing to think, and all I remember now is the surprised look on his face as he tumbled backwards among the rocks.

“Ro—come back here, damn you!”

I heard Lucas call to me, and I must have turned my head. The next thing I knew an arm had clamped around my waist, and a voice, gloatingly triumphant, said: “Better throw down that gun, Cord, or she gets a hole blown in her pretty body.” And at just about the same time I heard Mark's voice, with a cold ugliness to it I had never noticed before.

“The only chance I'll give you is if you'll turn around and shoot that gun at my uncle. Maybe I'll let Rowena live then…”

Almost without thinking I made myself go limp, kicking backwards only when I felt the man who held me let his grip slacken. I fell to the ground, hearing the now-familiar sound of a bullet wing past my ear and the man who had held me fell also, a grunting, burbling sound coming from his throat.

When I looked, Lucas was lying on his side, where he had flung himself, and he had just fired his gun. Mark was dead—and a second bullet, fired while I watched, made sure of it.

I was glad that I couldn't see his face. Mark had fallen some distance, and the sunlight reflected off his blond hair, turning crimson in the slowly widening pool of blood that seeped from under his prone body. The gun that had been in his hand had fallen somewhere as he fell; but at least his face was turned away from me…

I had time to notice all this as I ran back down the slope toward Lucas, wondering why he stood so stiffly—but only until I saw all the rifles.

“You murderin' bitch!” Todd Shannon's harsh voice rang out. “I suppose this was what you planned on all along!”

“Why won't you listen to me? Are you afraid of hearing the truth, afraid that for once in your life you might be proven wrong?”

“Shut up, an' stop wastin' your breath. I wouldn't want you to miss it when that half-breed lover of yours starts screaming—if he don't choke to death first.”

There was no mercy in Todd Shannon's voice—none in his face. And I think that I would have tried to kill him myself if he hadn't tied my wrists to his saddle horn.

“It was Mark, for God's sake, I can prove it! Todd—if you'll only take us to Fort Selden! I tell you that's where we were going. Mr. Bragg—”

“Bragg can tell me whatever it is was so damn urgent after I've done what I should have done a long time ago. Look up, missy. That sun's getting hotter now, ain't it? Hot enough to shrink that green rawhide real fast.” I began to shudder weakly, and Shannon laughed. “Tell you what—I don't want him to die too fast—not before he's had a chance to suffer. So why don't you take that canteen an' go wet down that piece of hide he's got wrapped round his neck? Mebbe you two can exchange some last words—while he can still talk, that is!”

Had it been an hour yet? Or longer? I had begun to wish that Todd, in his blind anger, had killed me or even beaten me unconscious as he had threatened to at first. Instead he had contented himself with forcing me to stand roped to his saddle, to watch…

I couldn't believe my ears when I heard Todd describe—his voice tight with rage and grief, of sorrow as he looked down at his nephew—what he intended to do.

“You murdering, woman-stealing 'breed. Your dying ain't gonna be easy as his was, I promise you that. Because you're gonna die real slow, Apache fashion. Boys, you see that cactus down there, just about the height of a man? You know what to do. An' make sure you use green hides when you're tyin' him up.”

I had never been closer to madness than I was then. I must have screamed. The next thing I remembered clearly was reeling backward, the side of my face throbbing where Todd had struck me.

“Only cure for a hysterical bitch,” I heard him snarl, and then Lucas, who had remained impassive, up until then said: “Send her back. She's got nothing to do with the hate that's between us, Shannon, and you know it.”

“Is that why you run off with her—an' had to kill my nephew to make her a widow?”

No—even now I don't want to remember. I don't want to and I must, Lucas and I. Each of us suffered a different form of agony, on that hot afternoon, when we all waited.

My hysteria and grief had turned into a kind of numbness. I had talked until my throat ached; trying to explain to Todd what Mark had really been like and what he had planned to do, but Todd would not listen. So now, when he handed me the canteen and untied my wrists, I said nothing more, merely looking at him with hatred in my eyes. He seemed to find this amusing.

“Go ahead! Mebbe you should rightly be the one who makes the choice whether your lover dies from strangulation or them cactus spines pushing their way into his flesh. Get up close an' watch him suffer—I want you to carry that picture with you for the rest of your days, you treacherous, murdering bitch!” I said nothing—I told myself that if Lucas could be silent and stoical, then I could too. And I promised myself that I would kill Todd Shannon. Yes—suddenly I could understand why blood feuds could come into being!

They had stripped off his shirt to crucify him against that giant cactus, and beads of sweat stood out on his brown torso. His arms were tied above his head, and blood from the rawhide that had already cut into his wrists slowly trickled down them.

His eyes were closed, and I could see the corded muscles stand out as he fought for breath against the strip of rawhide that was tightening around his neck. I couldn't help whispering his name. His eyes opened and looked into mine, but he didn't know me.

I remembered Todd Shannon's jeering voice when he had told me that I could make the choice—a slow, agonizing death, or one slightly less slow and almost as painful. God, God, how strong was I? How much could I stand? I heard a gasping noise escape from Lucas's throat, and I couldn't bear it. Not yet, I thought. Not like
this,
his life choked away with agonizing slowness while I was forced to watch.

I lifted the canteen, careful not to lean against his taut, strained body and poured most of the water on his neck, saturating the strip of hide that was strangling him with the life-giving fluid. Only a deferment…

I suddenly felt my arm seized and the canteen snatched away as Todd Shannon, coming up silently behind me, said harshly: “That's enough! I don't want to make it easy on him.” He began to drag me with him, laughing when I made a grab for his gun.

“Still got some fight in you, huh? I must say I didn't figure on you having this much guts.” And then, his voice hardening, “Did he tame you? Too bad he ain't gonna last long enough to see how tame you get
when I'm through with you.”

He held my wrists in a cruel grip, obviously enjoying my struggles to get free.

“Ever seen such a wildcat, boys? Half-Apache herself, seems like—it comes from associating too much with Injuns, I guess. We'll have to teach her how to act halfway civilized again, won't we?” One of his men laughed, but the others, all standing by their horses watching, seemed unusually silent. I think they were remembering that I was after all a white woman, and still half owner of the SD, now that Mark was dead. Perhaps they were thinking of what might happen afterward.

I was never to know exactly what they thought, for at that moment, putting his face close to mine, Todd growled: “Only regret I got is that Elena Kordes ain't here to watch her oldest cub die!” And the import of his words hit me like a blow, making my face stiffen and my struggles cease so suddenly that I fell against him.

“Lucas is not Elena's son!” I think I whispered the words at first, and then I almost screamed them at him. “He's not her son, do you hear me? Is that why you're killing him, to punish her?”

His eyes, like green glass, bored into my face as he shook me violently.

“What the hell kind of story you got thought up this time?”

“But it's true—it's true! Even my father knew it, at the end—it's all written down in his journals for you to read, unless you don't want to accept the truth!” I looked wildly into his face, bending over mine, his red blond hair bright in the sun, and suddenly I felt a strange, terrifying sense of premonition as the numbness in my mind seemed to fall away.

“He—he doesn't even look like her!” I gasped. “He doesn't look like any of them! His hair has blond streaks in it, and his eyes… Lucas was adopted by the Indians—he isn't one himself! He looks—he looks…”

I thought I was dreaming when another voice, familiar and yet unfamiliar, finished my half-formed sentence, and put the incredible, stupefying thought that had suddenly come to me into words.

“Strikes me that we've all been blind. He looks a lot like Alma did, Todd—and a little like you in the eyes an' jaw.”

Todd flung me away from him and I would have fallen if a pair of blue-clad arms, appearing from nowhere, hadn't caught me. And I was looking into a face I hadn't expected to see again. Elmer Bragg's—looking grayer, and just as enigmatic as always.

But he wasn't looking at me, he was looking at Todd—and Todd had whirled around and gone to Lucas, and there was a knife in his hand.

Colonel Poynter, sitting stiffly on his horse, seemed frozen, as did Todd's own men and the troopers who had appeared so suddenly.

“Bragg—you've always been a nosy, interferin' bastard! But this time justice is going to be done. Any of you make a move, an' I'm goin' to slit his throat, you hear? That you dare use Alma's name…” Todd's voice was hoarse, I had never heard it shake with rage before. Even his eyes had a wild look to them.

Of us all, only Elmer Bragg seemed completely unconcerned. He shrugged.

“Always did think you were a blind, pig-headed fool, Todd Shannon. Just don't want to admit you're wrong, do you? Well—go ahead, if you must. Play right into her hands. It's what she always intended, you know. Brought the boy up to hate you—she hoped that one day he'd kill you or you'd kill him—and then she'd have the ultimate pleasure of telling you you'd killed your own son.”

“You're lying! You're trying to trick me, all of you! Trying to save a murderer who just killed my own brother's son!”

“Just as your own brother's son planned to have you killed, and even—I'm sorry, Lady Rowena—made sure your own partner died conveniently of an overdose of his sleeping medicine? No, Todd—no one's lying except you, to yourself.”

Todd had his fingers in Lucas's hair, the knife edge against his throat. But he hesitated. I remember praying, although I cannot remember the words I used.

Remarkably calm, remarkably controlled, Elmer Bragg's voice cut again through the silence that had seized us all.

“If he killed Mark, he'll have to stand trial for it in any case. And if they find him guilty of murder, he'll hang. But are you going to take the chance of never knowing, for sure? Or finding out the truth too late? Use your brains, man! Think! Did you ever find Alma's body—or the boy's? No—you were told that her brother had taken them both for burial. An old, dying man told you he saw your wife fall with an arrow through her breast, still carrying her child. That Alejandro ran forward with a cry of grief. Think, I tell you! What happened after that? Suppose the child lived? You remember when Elena came, to offer you your son—did you let her finish what she had begun to say? Didn't you jump to the conclusion that it was the child she was carrying that she was talking of? But how could she have known her child would be a son? And another thing I learned from the shaman of that particular band of Apaches, who is Elena's grandfather—why did Alejandro Kordes himself tell Lucas that he had been responsible for his mother's death? Evidence, Todd Shannon. This is what the shaman told Guy, and this was one of the reasons that Guy had to die before his appointed time—before he could warn both you and Lucas. And if you need more evidence I suggest that before you cut your son's throat you look in the medicine pouch he carries about his neck. In it you'll find the silver medal he was wearing when the Apaches took him, the medal you had given to his mother.”

There was such a terrible uncertainty in Todd Shannon's eyes and in his voice when he spoke that I could almost feel sorry for him. But he remained unconvinced of the truth—or seemed to be. I think for the first time in his life Todd Shannon was afraid; that he had found himself backed into a corner, faced with one shocking fact after another, and didn't know what to do.

He cut open the medicine pouch, and the battered silver medal fell into the palm of his hand. He looked from the medal to the face of the son he had denied all his life, and had almost killed, and wept.

How dispassionately I can write all this down as I come near the end as I know it. I say “as I know it” because it is not yet finished, and I must wait, with uncertainty gnawing at my brain and only my writing to keep me busy and take my mind off what may be. The trial must be almost over now. There were reporters there, I was told, from as far east as Boston and as far west as San Francisco. And for that matter the whole of the Territory has. Everyone in Sante Fe heard or read the story. I have been praised and vilified—my pregnancy (which can no longer be hidden) and the parentage of my unborn child—the circumstances under which the man who had been my husband died—all these have been discussed and speculated upon for weeks now.

Todd is at the trial, and so is Mr. Bragg. I have been told that even Elena Kordes left her secluded valley to travel to Santa Fe. Lucas and I were quietly married by Colonel Poynter only a week before he had to leave for Santa Fe, but as usual, when I hear Elena's name, I am afraid. What will they say to each other? He told me only that they quarreled when he learned of the trick that she and Montoya had played. That he left the valley in anger. But that, as Montoya himself had reminded me before, was not the first time they had quarreled. “Always, he goes back…” Why do I have to think of that now?

Just as I wrote those words, I felt the stirring of my child within me. Mine—I am almost afraid to call it ours, in case… why must I think of that night with Ramon?

Lucas will not let me talk about it. “The child you have will be our child,” he said firmly on the last occasion we were together, and stopped any further protesting on my part with his kiss.

Too many doubts, too many fears when he is not here, especially when Elena is where he is and I am not.

Marta comes in, looking worried—tears coming to her eyes when she sees them in mine. How easily I cry these days. It's my condition—God, I'm tired of hearing them all say that!

What will we do after the trial—if there is any afterward? Lucas will not speak to Todd—he told me, sullenly, that it isn't easy to get rid of a hate that has lived with you for years. But Todd has—hasn't he? Todd wants an heir, of course; he wants a son to inherit the SD, his kingdom that so many have lusted after. But Lucas won't have it. “After it's over—if they decide not to hang me after all—you can choose between staying here or coming with me—wherever I might feel like going.” When Lucas said that, he sounded like the suspicious, hard-faced stranger I had first known. What am I going to do? Oh God, I'm so tired of journeying!

That is where I ended my journal yesterday, just before I decided that in order to keep myself busy I must change everything around, dust and polish the furniture, sort out all my father's journals and papers.

Today—today I have found the missing codicil to his will, fallen behind the drawer where he kept his journals. This is what Mark looked for, knowing what was to be in it. Perhaps it is another one of the reasons why he put the overdose of laudanum in the half-empty bottle of brandy that always sat at my father's elbow… and paid a hired killer to murder Mr. Bragg in case he had found it. Just as he paid Pardee to kill Todd—