Where was the dowdy, frowning girl with spectacles tipped on her nose? Or the sophisticated woman with jewels sparkling around her throat and at her ears? I still wore my tiny sapphire ear studs, and somehow, taken with the rest of me, they looked incongruous. Impulsively I unscrewed them and handed them to Little Bird.
“A gift,” I said in Spanish. “Because you have been kind.”
For a moment she seemed confused, staring from the small, sparkling jewels I held in the palm of my hand, to my face. And then she took them, her face solemn and touched my hand.
“Gracias,” she said in Spanish, and then in Apache, in a softer voice, “nidee,” which I had learned meant sister. At that moment, we were close to being friends.
It was a pity that Lucas had to spoil the moment. He came striding towards us, his chest bare except for the small buckskin pouch that hung suspended from a rawhide cord around his neck—the medicine pouch that every Apache warrior carried with him. And why not, since he was obviously proud of his Apache blood? His wet hair glistened in the dim light, and his face was closed and unreadable. “The shaman wishes to speak with you.” Little Bird had dropped back unobtrusively, and his fingers closed around my wrist.
“Show some respect. He is an old man, but very wise. “My—” and I wondered why he hesitated before he went on, “my grandfather.”
“I have always respected those who have earned respect.” I tilted my head back and my eyes met his. “Do you think I would embarrass you?”
“How do I know what to expect of you?” His words were almost muttered, with a kind of frustration underlying them. “You’re a most unexpected woman!”
“I’m adaptable,” I said coolly, moving my wrist from his grasp. “I’m patient too. And I know my place. Shouldn’t I walk a few paces behind you? My head meekly bowed, of course. I know you would not want anyone to think you had allowed your slave any extra privileges!”
I had the satisfaction of seeing him scowl down at me, his eyes puzzled. But “Watch your tongue…” was all he said to me before he turned and walked ahead of me toward the largest wickiup in the encampment.
I was horribly nervous, although I would have died rather than show it. Why did the shaman wish to speak to me? I could not understand my nervousness either. I had been presented to the Queen of England and had sailed through the whole performance without a suggestion of butterflies in my stomach! But this was not England, and as preposterous as it would have seemed to me less than a month ago, I was the prisoner of a man I despised and distrusted.
“Don’t speak first,” Lucas instructed me before we entered the conical-shaped brush dwelling. “Try to sit quietly without fidgeting until you’re spoken to.”
I could not resist letting a flash of sarcasm show in my tone. “Thank you for instructing me in the proper etiquette! Your slave will try not to disgrace you.”
He gave me one of his brooding, expressionless glances that seemed to warn me I was going too far, but he said nothing and, bending his head, he preceded me into the gloomy, firelit interior.
The old shaman seemed half asleep as we seated ourselves on either side of the doorway. For some time he neither moved nor acknowledged our presence. A fat woman who appeared to be much younger than he moved quietly about her duties in the background. His daughter? His wife? Were shamans allowed to marry? He had discarded the ceremonial buckskin headdress decorated with eagle and turkey feathers and now wore only the usual headband of an Apache warrior. His brown face seemed to be composed of seams and wrinkles, and he might have been a hundred years old. “My grandfather,” Lucas Cord had said, with that odd, tiny hesitation. Was it possible that this was Elena Kordes’s father? The Apache chief who had made a young Spanish woman captive his wife?
I studied the old man from beneath my lowered lashes, and after a short time I received the distinct impression that he was doing the same thing.
“So—you are the one.” The words, spoken in rusty Spanish, were uttered so suddenly that I almost jumped. The old fox! So he had been watching me after all. I raised my eyes to his half-open ones, but did not speak. He had made a statement; what was there to say?
We regarded each other, and after a few seconds had passed the old man’s eyes opened fully. He looked at Lucas, I thought. It was difficult to tell, with the fire between us.
“Does she speak, or is she afraid to do so?”
I compressed my lips together as Lucas answered him, his tone caustic.
“She speaks too much sometimes, oh my grandfather. And I do not think she is afraid.”
The old man was nodding, turning his eyes back to me. “That is good. You do not have the look of a woman who is afraid. Sometimes my grandson is not as wise as he thinks he is. When I first saw you, the thought came to me—this is one of the rare women who listens, and observes; and learns what from she sees. I have seen for myself how quickly you have learned our ways. I told myself, perhaps the mind and the heart of this woman are as open and honest as were those of her father, who came one day to this camp alone, with no fear, because, he said, he would understand the Apache.” The old man nodded again, as if it pleased him to turn his thoughts backwards. “Your father was the only white man I have called siqiàsn—brother. And as long as he lived he was a true blood brother to the Apache.” The old, rheumy eyes seemed to search my face, “You understand now why I have called you here?” I did not understand—not yet, not quite. But my father, blood brother to the same savage, merciless Indians who had attacked the stagecoach, murdered and tortured, and then had carried me off?
I could see that the shaman expected me to answer him. I could think of nothing to say except, shaking my head, “No, I am not certain if I understand or not. Did you know who I was then? From the beginning?”
“Ah, ah!” Sitting cross-legged, the old man began to rock very slightly back and forth, as if it helped him to think. “Now I have made you curious. That is good. Your curiosity will make you speak out and ask questions, where before you were doubtful, you wondered, why has this old man sent for me? What kind of things will he ask me? You are your father’s daughter, his only child from across the great water. That is why you are here.” He paused and I leaned forward, but he raised one hand in a somehow imperious gesture.
“I see many questions in your eyes, but you will ask them later, those that I have not already answered. You are wondering if the warriors who first brought you as a captive to their camp were sent to look for you. No. It was a raiding party. For many days the young men had watched the coach go by and they learned how many soldiers usually guarded it, how many guns they carried. Sometimes the tracks left by the wheels were deeper than on other days. They knew that on such days silver was carried in a box hidden at the back. My daughter, it was by chance you were on the coach our young warriors captured. Or perhaps it was one of those things that was meant to happen, who knows?” His eyes turned for a moment on Lucas, sitting silent and cross-legged; his face still without expression.
“Perhaps it was also meant to happen that on the very day you were brought into the camp where my other grandson is subchief, this one happened to be there, and knew who you were. He brought you here first, as I would have wanted him to.”
First? They were all talking in riddles, Lucas and his brother Ramon—now this old man. I had not been told what was expected of me. Why it was necessary for me to be brought here under such humiliating conditions!
Etiquette or no, it was impossible for me to sit silently for a moment longer. I cast an angry glance at Lucas Cord, and I thought one eyebrow lifted a fraction, as though he warned me to silence, or challenged me to speak. Well, I would speak out, whether he liked it or not.
“You have something to say, and the words are bursting from your throat.” Perhaps the shaman practiced mind reading.
“Yes!” I burst out, trying to keep some of the anger I had suppressed for so long out of my voice. “I would like to know why I was brought here, and where I am being take
n. He,” and I poured all the contempt I could muster into my voice, “would tell me nothing at all, except that I could choose being his mother’s guest or her servant! And what is more, he’s used me despicably, threatened me, made me slave for him—just as if I’d done him some injury, or my father hadn’t saved his miserable life! You have just said my father was like a brother to you, and you’ve spoken to me as if I was a guest, but he…”
“That’s enough!” Lucas Cord’s bitter, angry voice slashed through my speech like a knife. “If you’d have tried guardin’ your tongue in the first place…”
“And I say peace! You will both be silent.”
The shaman’s voice was soft and papery, the rustling voice of an old man. But the stern note of authority underlying it brought the silence he had requested. His eyes studied us both, and when he spoke again his voice was gentler. “I was thinking, as you two spoke angry words to each other, that there must be a reason for the hate that is between you. It is a pity, for your father would not have wished it to be so.”
He had chosen to address me, and my lips tightened mutinously.
“Perhaps my father did not know him very well!”
“And you do?”
“I know, and have experienced all that I care to!”
“She’s a stubborn, ill-natured female!”
I glared at Lucas. “And you are a cold-blooded murderer and a violator of women!”
The shaman raised his hand again, and I could almost imagine that he frowned.
“Is this true? You know our customs, and that I consider this woman as my daughter. You are also aware…”
“I’m aware of what Guy Dangerfield wanted, but she is not. And I swear to you that I did not touch her.”
How could he lie so flatly, and in my presence?
Sheer fury made me bold. “Ask him if he did not tear the clothes from my body on that very first night, after reminding me crudely that as he had bought me I was now his property, to do with as he pleased! He threatened to beat me.”
“And she deserved it. She was hungry and I brought her food. She threw it at me in a rage.”
“How cleverly you twist things about! The things you said to put me in a rage—have you forgotten?”
Our eyes clashed, and even in the firelight I could see those dangerous, greenish glints in his, like tiny flames.
“You are like children who throw angry words at each other in a fit of rage. My daughter, did he violate you?”
Trapped by his question, I bit my lip. “He—he lay beside me every night. No doubt so that his friends would think he hadn’t wasted such a wonderful rifle for nothing! But no, he did not do more than that.”
The old man nodded. “You are honest. And I think you understand how the mind of a man will work.”
“This man’s mind, perhaps! He is…”
“You’re repeating yourself now, Lady Rowena. Can’t you think of anythin’ new to say?”
I gave him an icy look and turned my head away. If he wanted to act like an angry, thwarted child, then let him.
Again it seemed as if the old shaman had read my mind. “You are still confused, are you not? You wonder why you are here, and why I have spoken of your father’s wishes. Will you hear me now, until I have finished speaking?”
He took my silence for consent, and his voice seemed to rustle in the stillness. “Your father and I spoke of peace. It surprises you? The Apache are few, and every day there are more of the white-eyes who come to settle on our old hunting grounds. In a rage against this our young men raid and kill, but for every white man we kill, two or three more come, and more soldiers with more guns. I am an old man and I see what must happen in the end. If we cannot make peace with the white man, the day of the Apache is ended. And so your father, my brother, and I would speak of such things. He made many writings in books, which he said he would leave for you. He knew that his days were not long, but when his daughter came she would turn all the old wrongs and the old hates into right. You did not read his books?”
I thought I could feel Lucas Cord’s scornful gaze upon me as I shook my head. “I started to read them. But before I came here, I had a letter from him requesting that I read them in order, from the beginning. I started to read, but I became lazy in the hot sun. And then so many things happened that I did not have time.”
“You had time to spend with Shannon—and that nephew of his.”
I refused to look towards Lucas.
“Todd Shannon was my father’s partner. I was going to marry him.”
The shaman’s face was bland. “Shannon is an old man filled with hate. Your father saw this. Understand me, he did not hate his partner. He hoped that you would be allowed to live in peace. But he knew this man. For you he had other plans. A scheme to end old hatreds and end old injustice. It is a pity you did not read what he wrote.”
“Everyone keeps telling me that! But…”
“Be patient, daughter, as your father was. I am shaman of my tribe. But your father was wiser even than I. He saw ahead. And he was a man who placed truth and justice above all else.” His look was benign; I thought he was being patient with me, and it only made me impatient.
“Everyone talks to me in riddles! I am told of my father’s wishes, but no one will tell me what they were.”
“You are a woman with the strong, quick mind of a man. But nevertheless you must learn to wait, to listen.” His head nodded again, and I noticed the swaying movement of his gaunt body.
“Your father once loved my own daughter. Perhaps he always did. My daughter turned from her people and sought the white man’s ways. I let her go. She had the mind of a warrior—stubborn, independent, seeking. She too hates. And that is why your father knew that the only way to end the hate was the old way. It is our custom, and your custom. Your father’s father was a chief. Your father married to please him. Was this not true? He expected you to think the same way. His wish was that you would marry one of my daughter’s sons.”
“Not him!” I could not help the exclamation that burst from my lips.
“Don’t have to worry about that! I like to do my own huntin’ for my own kind of game.”
“Are you sure you do not mean prey?”
The old man’s voice was calm.
“So you will not have each other. And Julio has a wife already. That leaves Ramon. He is not Apache in his thoughts. But he is educated, and a gentleman. He will fit well into the white man’s world. And yet he is my grandson too. He has seen you and spoken to you. He understands his duty, just as you must understand yours.”
“No!” I sat upright. I could not let this farce continue a moment longer. “This is—it’s not possible! You tell me I am supposed to marry a man I do not know? Because of some old feud that was started before I was born?”
“When you have had time to consider everything, and to know Ramon, you will not think such a marriage impossible. I have seen that you do not find it difficult to adapt yourself to a way of life that is different from yours, and in this case I think you will begin to understand why it is necessary. Is it not the custom in the country where you were born, too, that such alliances are made between families? The marriage between your father and your mother—was it not made for such reasons?”
“That may be so, but look what happened! They did not love each other. My father…”
“Your father was a wise man, and you are his daughter. You are here because he sent for you.”
“To be married off to a stranger? To become a pawn?”
“You are a strong-willed woman. My daughter was such a one too. If she had married as I had wished her to—if I had not been weak with her because she had her mother’s eyes… well, it is done, and past. But I will keep the word I gave to my brother.” His eyes looked into mine, stilling the angry protests that leaped to my tongue. “You look defiant, my daughter. You will not be forced into such a marriage, or any marriage, you understand? But you must be given the time and the opportunity to k
now the man your father chose for you—perhaps to know both sides of a story. Go now, and think of what I have said to you.”
I would have said more, cried out my angry protests, but I felt Lucas Cord’s fingers close around my arm, bruising my flesh as he pulled me to my feet.
The old man looked at us through hooded, sleepy eyes. “She is your sister; you her brother. See that you respect and protect her. We will speak again before you leave for the valley.”
I found myself outside, scarcely able to believe what I had just been told. Impossible!
I must have said aloud, “I won’t!” for Lucas shook my arm, and I looked up to find him glowering down at me.
“You start hollerin’ and makin’ a scene an’ I swear I’m goin’ to beat you, sister or not!”
I gasped with frustration, and his lips twisted. “Better go back to your meek and mild act—it suited you a lot better. If you were my woman I’d cut your tongue out!”
I gathered my wits together and stood still, forcing myself to smile into his angry face. “But I am not. Perhaps you had best start remembering that fact.”
He dropped my arm as if it burned his fingers, and it gave me pleasure to see the effort he made to control himself.
Without another word he turned on his heel and left me, leaving me to find my way back to the wickiup of Little Bird’s relatives by myself.
Nineteen
I have been accused at various times of being cold, ruthless, unfeeling, calculating. And perhaps I’ve been all these things. I remember the time, too, when I prided myself on the control I had over my emotions.
It has always made me furious to find myself caught up in a chain of circumstances over which I have no control, or to feel myself at another’s mercy. I was so angry that evening when Lucas Cord turned and walked away from me that I could almost feel my rage choke me.
And yet, before the night was over I had managed to calm myself sufficiently to become rather curious about the valley I was to be taken to, and the people who lived there.
The Wildest Heart Page 26