The idea that I might marry Ramon Kordes was still preposterous, but it appeared as though I would have no choice but to meet him again. Very well, then, I told myself firmly. If he’s the gentleman they say he is, he will surely understand the awkwardness of the situation in which we have both been placed. When he realizes that I have no intention of being forced into a marriage of convenience, perhaps he will pave the way for my leaving. But what of Elena Kordes, of whom I’d heard so much? And what of Lucas?
He took pains to avoid me when the men took their evening meal. As usual they ate first, and the women waited patiently until the men had eaten their fill before they could begin.
I was surprised when just after we had eaten, the fat woman who had been in the shaman’s lodge came in and spoke in low tones to Little Bird’s mother. It turned out that the old man had decided to make our relationship public. As the daughter of his blood brother he felt some sense of paternal obligation toward me, and I must therefore sleep in his lodge and consider it my home as long as I remained in the ranchería.
Little Bird whispered to me that I was being shown great honor, and even her formidable-looking mother gave me a look of grudging respect
The old shaman, who was already lying wrapped in his blankets before the coals, raised himself on an elbow and gave me a nod of welcome.
“It is the custom for our young, unmarried women to sleep in the lodge of an older relative,” he said in his dry, papery voice. “Sleep well, my daughter.” I understood that there was to be no more talking tonight. The fat squaw, whose name, I was to discover later, was Falling Leaf, could speak no Spanish. She signaled to me with motions of her hands that I should prepare myself for sleeping, and showed me a place against the wall where a blanket had already been laid out for me.
I wondered, as I lay down obediently, whether the old man was protecting my reputation, or whether he was showing his grandson, in this subtle way, that I was no longer to be treated as a captive, but as an Apache virgin. What was my real position here? What would it be when we left to journey to the hidden valley?
My whole life had changed so much within the space of a few weeks that I could hardly believe all this was really happening to me. Tonight I could not fall asleep from sheer tiredness, as I had done on the nights past. My mind was full of questions to which I had no answers, and when I finally did fall asleep my dreams were frightening. I dreamed of pursuit across a desert where my feet kept sinking deeply into the sand and I could hear the thundering hoofbeats of my pursuers close behind me. I knew both fear and despair when I found myself at the edge of a very tall cliff, looking down into nothingness; and I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder, ready to push me over…
I started up, sweat streaming down my face, but it was only the old woman, waking me. For a moment, reality appeared unreal. I felt stiff in every limp, as if I’d actually been running, the blood pounding in my ears.
The shaman slept. He was an old man, and liked to sleep late into the day, Little Bird told me later, at the stream. Sometimes his dreams foretold certain events; sometimes they held warnings. I wondered if my dreams had been meant to warn me of the dangers I was going into.
The feeling of foreboding I had awakened with seemed to grow stronger and stronger as the day passed slowly by. I was kept busy. I had already learned that the women in an Apache camp were always kept occupied with one task or another while the men, when they were not on raiding or hunting trips, sat in front of their brush dwellings and saw to their weapons or gossiped among each other like men everywhere.
Little Bird took me with her to gather roots and wild berries to prepare into a kind of paste for the journey. As we followed the course of the small stream she pointed out different kinds of edible plants, and some whose leaves had medicinal properties. This morning I noticed that her manner was much less reserved, and she chattered to me as if we were truly friends. Every now and then she would call me nidee, sister, and look at me shyly. And then I noticed, in spite of my preoccupation, that on the few occasions she mentioned the journey that lay ahead of us she would say: “When you go to the valley…” or “When you start out tomorrow…”
“But you are coming too, are you not?”
She gave me a startled, somewhat puzzled look. “I thought you had already been told. My father is old, and he asked my husband if I could remain in his lodge for a few days longer, so that he can continue to take delight in our children. My husband was kind enough to agree.”
It was my turn now to look startled. “But surely I’m not to be forced to travel alone with that man?”
“Oh, no!” Little Bird looked slightly reproachful. “My husband will be going too. It is a long time since he has seen his mother, and he says it is his duty. And three other warriors, for the hunting along the way. Two of them, who do not yet have children, will take their women along with them, to dress and cure the meat and pack the hides. You will not feel lonely, with two brothers to take care of you.”
“Brothers?” I stared at her uncomprehendingly, and she put her hand over her mouth, giggling shyly behind it.
“My mother told me, and my aunt, who is a widow and looks after the shaman, told her what he said. She says she heard your father and my husband’s grandfather talk of this long before you came to this land. Truly, nidee, if I had known you were to marry the younger brother of my husband, I would have made your arrival to the camp of our people a happier one. I am ashamed.”
“But I…” I looked into her concerned face and could not say what I had almost burst out with. She would not have understood, and my defiance would only upset her. I would save the scathing speeches I had stored up all day for Lucas Cord, when I next confronted him.
But I did not see Lucas at all that day. The women found tasks to keep me busy, and with a semblance of meekness I followed their laughing directions, although I seethed with anger inside when I found that I was expected to prepare his food for the journey as well, and wash his trail-grimed clothes. I beat them against a flat rock by the stream, following the example of the other women; and I did it with a vicious fury, hoping they would shred into tatters.
“Not so hard!” Little Bird protested, half-laughing.
“But what about me? He tore my other clothes off my back, and these garments are all I have. They’re filthy!”
She looked concerned. “I did not know, nidee. But your father the shaman will give you more. He is rich.”
“It’s not the same thing!” I protested.
That evening, however, the old man made a ceremonial presentation to me of the traditional Apache costume. “Our women now would rather wear garments of the white women than wear the buckskin garments that their mothers took such pride in wearing,” he said in his dry voice. “These belonged to Carmelita, who was the mother of my daughter Elena. She wore them when I took her as my wife, before the whole tribe. It would please an old man’s heart if you would accept them, my daughter.”
The traditional Apache woman’s costume consisted of a long skirt, reaching just above the ankles, richly embroidered with beads and quills. The high-necked overblouse was just as heavily embroidered and carefully fringed at the yoke and sleeves as the skirt had been.
“To please me, I would hope that you wear these garments when you reach the valley. Perhaps it will remind my daughter Elena that she is also an Apache.”
“I’m proud that you would give these to me,” I murmured. I could not help wondering if, perhaps, this old man with his seamed and wrinkled face had loved his young captive. And she—had she loved him in return? I was constantly being reminded, through old stories of other people’s hates and sorrows and loves, of a past I’d had no share in. I was supposed to react, but how could I? Even my father was becoming more and more of a stranger to me. What had he really expected of me?
The shaman, my adopted father, seemed to take his duties seriously.
There were other gifts; moccasins, another full skirt of cotton with a yoked ove
rblouse for traveling in.
It was the traveling itself, and my company, that I objected to most of all. I ventured to protest, and his face became closed.
“I had a dream last night. All this was meant. Your father, who should have been a shaman of his own people, saw it first.”
“But he didn’t even know where I was,” I objected. “Or even if I would agree to come here.”
“He knew that his blood ran in your veins. I tell you, daughter, he knew. Be at peace now. Try and learn to accept. Go to the valley; meet with Ramon. He is of the same world you came from. You cannot know your true feelings until you have first had a chance to find what they are, seeing both sides.”
Again the shaman seemed to display an almost uncanny power of reading my thoughts. “You are still angry at Lucas, are you not?”
“How can I help it? He has treated me despicably. There was a time when I tried to defend him to others. But when I was presented with proof…”
“The kind of proof you speak of has many sides, daughter. You heard this—proof from those who hate him. Have you asked him for the truth?”
“What truth?” I was too perturbed to be cautious. “I know that my father believed in him, but what of the things he did later? Shooting men from ambush, running away with Todd Shannon’s stepdaughter, and then abandoning her. Selling her to another man! And all for revenge. She was killed at a barroom brawl afterwards. Does he know that?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” The old man’s voice was as soft as the rustling of dry leaves.
“Ask him?” I realized that my voice had risen, I tried to control it. “He would only lie, as he has done before. Or he would not answer my questions. Or he would grow angry with me.”
“Is it justice that if a man has been accused by other men he should not be given a chance to answer these accusations?”
This old Indian might have been my own father—or my grandfather, who had first taught me of logic and justice.
My eyes dropped under his calm, steady gaze. “You think I should ask him?”
“It is what you think, my daughter. And what you must ask yourself. I can only tell you that Lucas is headstrong, and he is angry. But if you can put aside your hate and ask him what is in your mind, he will answer you. I have spoken to him, and he will show you the respect that he would show a sister. That is all.” He sighed. “Peace can be achieved only if people will sit down together and speak of those things that trouble their minds. It is easy to be angry. Difficult to say, ‘I would know what is troubling my brother—I will try to understand.’”
I sighed.
“You remind me of my grandfather. He was a stubborn, bull-headed old man with his own ideas. But he loved me, and he tried to teach me to use my mind. He told me that the fact that I was a woman didn’t mean I could not think rationally. And I think you are trying to tell me the same thing.”
“Did I not say that you had the mind of a clever man? You are your father’s daughter. Seeing both sides of a coin.”
I slept surprisingly well that night, perhaps because I had not yet seen Lucas. But all my feelings of resentment boiled up again the following morning, when we were supposed to set out.
I saw only two horses, already loaded down with supplies for our journey and stolen silver.
“But where are the other horses? You surely don’t mean us to walk?”
“More horses would only slow us down, little sister.” His voice was exaggeratedly polite, but I knew better. “You are an Apache now—walking will come easily to you, I’m sure.”
I felt as if everyone else was watching us, as if I was being judged. The two women who were to accompany us were waiting, uncomplainingly, in spite of the heavy packs they carried on their backs. Julio stood beside his brother, his face, as usual, unreadable.
I shrugged lightly, hating myself for the gesture. At least he would understand sarcasm, if no one else did. “Of course. I should have guessed, shouldn’t I?”
“When you see the kind of country we have to travel over, I think you’ll understand better,” he said quietly. I felt the words were a concession to his grandfather, who had risen early to see us off, and I turned away.
And so we traveled on foot, leading the horses more slowly than we had gone before, for we climbed upward.
The slopes of the Black Range became more thickly forested, the scent of piñon and alder sweet in the clear, cool air. The mountains seemed pristine, untouched; here were none of the ugly scars left by miners greedy for precious metals. It seemed as if nothing had ever dwelled here but the wild creatures whose natural habitat this was. I did not have to be told this was Apache country.
The men went ahead, their steps springy, easily breathing the thinning air as we climbed. They carried rifles but when they shot game for our evening meal they used their ancient weapon, the bow and arrow.
Had I really walked all day? A week ago it would have seemed impossible. And yet we had only stopped a few times to rest the horses, and to snatch a quick meal of the pemmican-like paste that Little Bird had gone to such pains to show me how to prepare.
When we made camp for the night the sun had barely dropped behind the nearest ridge. The men found a small cave, scooped out in the side of a towering cliff, which would provide both shelter and protection from any predators. There were no brush shelters erected tonight; only a scooped out hollow for a small, smokeless fire, and blankets spread out against the rocky walls. I had begun to imagine that Apache women were merely slaves to their husbands, but seeing the shy looks that were exchanged, and the whispered talk between husbands and wives, I began to see another side of their lives. The two young women and their men were like young lovers anywhere—not quite used to each other yet, still embarrassed to show their feelings in front of others.
As for myself, I felt as if I was acting a part. Rowena Dangerfield—Apache virgin. Shy, modest, self-effacing. Blushing bride-to-be. The thought made me grimace. You’re getting cynical, I warned myself; be careful! And indeed I would have to be careful if I ever wanted to be free again. I could dismiss Ramon Kordes easily. In spite of his bold Latin gallantry, he was a young man, and, I was sure, I could appeal to his sense of chivalry. No, it was not Ramon who made me frown thoughtfully into the darkness as I lay huddled in my blankets, trying to keep my teeth from chattering in the cold night air. It was the thought of his mother, the formidable Elena Kordes who had started a blood feud; the woman Todd Shannon hated and my father had loved. Ruthless, arrogant, designing; the kind of woman who had brought her sons up to hate as much as she did, and did not hesitate to use them as instruments of her revenge. What kind of a woman would I find when we arrived in the secret valley? Instinct told me that we would be adversaries, that I must not underestimate either her power or her determination. If Todd’s story was to be believed this was the same woman who, when she was a young girl, had had her own cousin and her cousin’s child killed so that she could take her cousin’s husband. The woman of whom even her own father had said, “She was a strong-willed woman with a mind.”
I turned uneasily, half-asleep. Tonight the men and the women slept separately, the men keeping watch in turns. The fire had been carefully extinguished, but I saw the dimly glowing red tip of a cigar, and smelled its odor, and knew which one of the men sat still and cross-legged just outside the small cave, his profile turned away from me.
Lucas Cord. The son who had made his mother’s revenge his own. Was he too thinking of her? Half-remembered phrases flashed through my mind.
“He always did worship his mother… he adored her.”
What kind of a man was he underneath all the savagery? What kind of woman was she to have produced such a son? I tried to imagine what she would look like after so many years. She would be older, of course, with wrinkles in her face, her black hair turned gray in streaks, no longer the young, passionately beautiful girl she had been. Imagination blended almost imperceptibly into half-dreamed images, and then everything vanishe
d as I slid into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Twenty
As it turned out, Elena Kordes was not in the least as I had pictured her. But our first meeting did not take place at once. I had not expected the valley to be so large that it would take us almost four hours to cross it.
It took us a journey of almost five days after we had left the ranchería to reach a place of awesome grandeur, a mountaintop that seemed to jut out over another mountaintop. We had done nothing but climb to get here, and I felt myself ready to drop with weariness, although I knew better than to utter a murmur of protest. Lucas Cord had driven us all, and even his own brother had grumbled at him that there was no need for such haste.
“The hunting here is good—why hurry? We will get there in the end!”
Julio, when he spoke to me, had begun to address me with exaggerated politeness, always prefixing his requests with the word nidee, little sister. Still, when he thought I wasn’t aware of it, I could feel his eyes upon me, making me feel vaguely uneasy.
Lucas, on the other hand, paid no attention to me unless he had to. He had dropped his old, sneering attitude, it was true, but this had been replaced by a kind of distance. He would thank me when I handed him his food, warn me when the terrain ahead of us became rough or perilous, but that was all. It was just as if the violent conflict between us had never been, and I found myself observing him, wondering what drove him.
All throughout our journey here he had seemed preoccupied. I noticed that he hardly spoke to anyone unless he was addressed, and he would sit by the fire when we made camp and stare away from the flame, into the distance. What was he thinking of?
Julio, sitting by me one night, followed the almost unconscious direction of my eyes and said softly, “My brother is a deep thinker, eh? Even for me, he is not an easy person to know.” His voice had turned almost sly. “But in this case I can guess what he is thinking of. There is a woman who waits for him on my mother’s rancho. She is young and lovely, the daughter of an old friend who died. I think she waits for Lucas to make up his mind.”
The Wildest Heart Page 27